


The Lost Composer of London

by MatsuriSuri



Category: Hellsing, Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2018-05-15 00:11:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 106,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5764318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MatsuriSuri/pseuds/MatsuriSuri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two mysterious boys fall from a portal; both have a major secret that could shake Seras fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Mysterious boys

**Author's Note:**

> Originally from my Fanfiction account Mizukifoxgirl. This will probably be my biggest and consistently worked on story. We will try to keep as close to the characters as we can. Twewy fans, please note this post game and as for Hellsing fans, we are going by the manga. Also, there is sometimes a small dictionary used for people who haven't played twewy and just want to read the story. We hope you enjoy the story and please leave us some feedback if we need to change anything in later chapters or just tell us if you like the story!

It was just another day at the Hellsing headquarters: Madam Integra stood on the upper porch smoking a fine cigar, watching Seras and the Wild Geese train in the courtyard. And to think, I fork out all the money for their training room, but they just do it out here, she thought.

"No, no, no," one of the Wild Geese said, "Seras, sweetheart, you're holding that gun all wrong! Here, let me held you." The mercenary smiled and sidled up behind Seras. He decided to back off after Seras flicked him in the stomach and sent him soaring into a tree.

The other men laughed heartily. "Hahaha! You know, her grip on the gun would be much firmer if her tits weren't getting in the way!"

"Yeah," another man said. "You want me to hold those, so they don't get in your way, honey?" The captain, Pip Bernadotte, laughed with his men, and yet his cigarette never fell from his gaping mouth.

Seras frowned; she was quickly growing tired of the Wild Geese's perverted comments. So focused down the sight of her gun at the man-shaped targets, and with five clean, rapid shots, blew through each of the cardboard men. The mercenaries became silent the moment they saw the large holes where the target's groins used to be. They didn't make any dirty jokes about Seras for the rest of the day.

Seras smiled with satisfaction and put her gun down. Bernadotte stamped out his used cigarette and grabbed a new one when he happened to look into the sky.

"What the..." he mumbled. A few stories above him a swirling mass was gathering. Well, it wasn't so much a "mass" as it was an energy of sorts. The other men were noticing this at the time as well, and reacted in a considerably less calm fashion then Bernadotte had. One particular mercenary would forever deny the future claims that he pissed his pants, but there was a noticeable stain running down his trousers at that moment.

"Miss," Bernadotte said to Seras, "you're the one with supernatural experience here. Care to tell us what that is?" Seras looked questioningly at him, and then followed his gaze upwards. A slight gasp escaped her, and she held her rifle noticeably tighter.

The thing was growing larger by the second and darker as well. It seemed as though the thing was separating the sky itself, opening into a black, swirling void. Integra watched the energy closely, unsure at first just what this disturbance could be.

Suddenly a noise began to emanate from the hole in the sky. Seras heard it first, of course, but couldn't place it for a moment. Then, as the noise became louder and louder, she identified it: something from withing the hole was screaming.

An orange and purple figure fell out of the hole, the source of the screaming. He landed with an excruciating thud in the grass on his stomach, a fall which most assuredly had killed the boy instantaneously. Seras and some of the braver Wild Geese cautioned towards him but jumped back when another figure landed next to him. This second boy, a particularly lighter colored one, didn't so much "land" as he did "glide" onto the ground, touching down on the grass as gracefully as a bird.

"Neku," the second boy said chipperly, "get up. That's just embarrassing."

To the other's great surprise, a heavy groan came from the orange-haired boy, Neku apparently, and he shakily pushed himself off the ground. His purple and blue clothes were covered in dirt, as well as being absolutely unfashionable, and somehow his giant purple headphones weren't shattered and stabbing into his neck.

"Ugh..." Neku groaned, holding his ribs tenderly. He looked up at the second boy, who seemed to consist of nothing but white: his clothes, his hair, everything except his lilac eyes that overflowed with devious intentions. A small grin lit his face. "What... the... HELL, Joshua!" Neku spat, partially wincing with pain. "What did you do?! Ow... How high was that drop?"

"Well, in actual space, a couple of dozen feet," Joshua said, still smiling. "Probably a lot more in travel distance, though."

Neku's brow wrinkled in confusion. "Travel distance? What do you mean...?" Suddenly his eyes widened as he really saw his surroundings. They were in a courtyard, surrounded by what looked like the military.

"Joshua," Neku growled. "Where are we?"

"Well, if I got the directions right, London, England. Not sure why we're in someone's estate, though..."

A small metallic object flashed in Neku's hand, and then a small fireball erupted in his hand. "London?" he asked threateningly. "You kidnapped me, dropped me down a hole, and say that we're in LONDON?!" The flames grew in his palm, parts of it turning from orange to white. If the Wild Geese hadn't jumped so far back in their various shocks, they would be able to feel the heat. Some of them still could.

Joshua's smile didn't weaken even a bit. "Come on Neku, what are you doing?"

A second fireball spawned in Neku's other hand, and he flourished them with a look of deep-seated resentment. "Shiki isn't here to keep me from beating you now, Joshua." He lobbed the fireballs toward Joshua's head at a speed only Seras could really follow. They burned like comets through the air, and everyone was sure that Joshua was dead.

Joshua raised his right hand and, in one decisive movement, crushed the fireballs with his fingers. There wasn't even a burn mark on his skin. At that point, the Wild Geese had been surprised so many times they were numb to this new scene.

Neku raised his hand above his head, and Seras could properly see what was in his hand earlier: a little metal pin with a fire design on it. As she saw it, more fire erupted from the trinket and coated Neku's arm. He thrust his arm forward and shot the fire at Joshua again. Just like before he simply grasped it in the air and the fire disappeared as quickly as it was created.

Joshua was still smiling warmly towards his apparent enemy. "Neku please, this is no way to act. We are these people's new guests after all!" Neku froze, suddenly aware of all the eyes staring at him. He looked back at Seras and the Wild Geese, and his composure changed completely. He tucked the pin in his short's pocket, making a tiny clink sound when it dropped. That wasn't the only pin he had.

Seras watched the pocket for a moment, but then saw out of the corner of her eyes something that truly inspired fear in her heart: Integra was marching down the courtyard, nearly biting through her cigar with twisted rage. Behind her lurked the tall, dark man in a red trench coat and brim hat.

She had summoned Alucard.

These kids were dead.  
========================================================  
That was the first chapter I hope you guys enjoyed it and please leave us feedback it helps!


	2. Explainations

"What the hell is going on out here?!" Madam Integra could be a very scary person when she chose to be, and having Alucard follow her like a blood-red shadow only made her form more intimidating.

One of the mercenaries whispered to the man beside him. "I've got money on the vampire and Integra. You up for those odds?"

"Shut up," the other man warned. Integra was glaring at the Wild Geese.

"What do I pay you idiots for? Last I checked, it wasn't to piss your pants when something falls out of the sky! Fearless soldiers my ass." Most of the mercenaries looked away in shame. Bernadotte continued smoking.

Integra then turned her attention to the two boys. "Now you: you have a lot of fucking nerve trespassing on my land."

Neku frowned. "Well, I didn't so much 'trespass' as I did 'plummet.'" Integra snapped her fingers and Alucard aimed his pistol between Neku's eyes.

"Now is no time to play coy, boy," she growled. Neku's eyes focused on Alucard, and his hand hovered over the pocket his pins lied in. He could feel a fight boiling up. Joshua noticed this and grabbed Neku's wrist. He looked into Neku's eyes, still smiling, and shook his head slowly. Neku tore his hand out of Joshua's grip, but didn't go for his pins.

Joshua turned his gaze to Alucard. His eyes darted over his body, studying him. Alucard noticed this and gave a nasty smile, showing off his fangs.

Joshua chuckled shortly. "Vampire."

Alucard turned his head. "Yes."

"Interesting," Josh said simply.

Integra's expression softened, becoming less angry and more quizzical. "You know vampires?" she asked.

"I know how to spot one," Joshua said, flipping his hair nonchalantly. "Large, shady clothing, red eyes, fangs. They aren't exactly subtle." He turned to face Seras, who was watching the scene unfold tensely, prepared to assist her master if need be. "Well, most of the time." His grin widened and he nodded to her. Her eyebrows furrowed. Who is this kid? She thought. Curious person.

A vampire, Neku thought. That's a new one. Then again, I can't say it's very shocking. "So then, would you mind telling Batty here to get his gun out of my face?" Neku asked sarcastically. The gun thrust forward and knocked Neku onto the ground. Alucard towered over him, his trigger finger itching, and with a toothy scowl across his face. A dark aura engulfed him like flames. Neku gripped his ribs in pain, but secretly palmed a pin during his fall. Vampire or not, he could cut his head off with a simple hand motion. But before either of them could make a move, Joshua stepped between them with his warm smile and offered a hand to Neku.

"That was rude Neku. We aren't here to antagonize these people."

Neku swatted his hand away. "I don't even know why we ARE here!" He pushed himself off the ground in a defiant way, but his wincing from the pain in his ribs nullified the intimidation he was going for. "Why couldn't you take Mr. Hanekoma* or someone else? I think you know enough people who would gladly come on you're stupid road trip instead of me."

"Mr. Hanekoma was occupied, and you seemed like the only other person I knew competent enough for this. You should be flattered!"

After seeing all this Integra pulled out a new cigar and lit it. Come to think of it, she thought aimlessly, why didn't I bring Walter out here? He lights these for me, and doesn't act out when people call him children's insults like "Batty."

"Calm down Alucard," she said flatly.

"Of course, my Master." He holstered his guns, scowling.

Joshua rubbed his head and smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry about my friend here," Joshua laughed. ("I'm not your friend," Neku mumbled inaudibly, massaging his ribs.) "He isn't what you would call the most tactful of people."

Integra looked down at Neku, analyzing his body and the headphones that even she could hear music playing out of. It's a wonder that he isn't completely deaf, she thought. He looked up at her, with a look that combined disdain and disinterest. Neku was fond of that look. "I can see that," Integra said to Joshua. Neku brushed off her words and pressed his headphones closer to his ears.

"In any case," Joshua continued, "We didn't mean to land on your property Miss. You see we're looking for a friend of mine." That's news to me; Neku thought, nodding his head to the beat of his music. "She lives here in London, somewhere."

"Well, we can't help you find her," Integra shot.

"Oh, we weren't asking you to," Joshua smiled innocently. "In fact, we should be going now. Sorry for disturbing your men." He turned around and signaled Neku that they were leaving.

"Hold on just a moment," Integra said, pulling out her cigar. "Even if you two were human I wouldn't let you leave after trespassing on my land."

Joshua's smile widened secretly. "I don't know what you mean."

"Don't play stupid boy; no human could summon a portal, or survive the fall through it." She looked at Neku. "And neither could any human use such powerful pyromancy. The both of you will be detained here until we find out what you are and what your purpose is. Men!" The Wild Geese stood at attention. "Search them and take them to the dungeon."

"Yes, Madam Hellsing!" The men grabbed their guns and moved toward the two. Neku reached into his pocket and plucked out a pin. The Wild Geese tensed and aimed their guns at Neku.

Joshua grabbed Neku's wrist. "If you think you can fight off this many men on your own, you're much dumber than I thought." Neku looked at Joshua in frustration. "Just act like it's a game and play along, hmm." He gave a little wink and released Neku's arm. With some hesitation, Neku replaced the pin in his pocket.

The two were thoroughly searched, but all they found were Neku's pins, which they hastily took from him. They also took his headphones, annoying Neku immensely. Joshua didn't have anything on him, not even lint in his pockets. They were then led into the Hellsing Manor and downstairs into the dungeons.

Integra watched them go while casually smoking her cigar. Her butler, Walter, walked up beside her.

"New guests, Miss Integra?"

"Trespassers, Walter. Non-human ones." She turned to him. "Get whatever information you can out of them. I don't terribly care how."

Walter smiled and bowed. "Of course Madam." Integra noticed Seras watching the boys. She looked intrigued by the sight of them like she was suddenly more interested in them than anything else.

"And take Seras with you. It'd be good for her to learn the way we interrogate."

"Of course Madam. Miss Victoria!" Seras snapped out of her focus. "Do come along."

"Alright." Seras ran up to Walter, and the two made their way into the Hellsing dungeons. Alucard appeared behind Integra, watching them go.

"Shall I go and monitor them, Master?"

"I doubt it's necessary. Walter and Seras can hold their own against two boys." She turned to her servant. "Unless you think that they're too much for them?"

Alucard smiled. His eyes shone through his red sunglasses like bulbs. "No, of course not. They don't pose much of a threat."

Integra eyed Alucard carefully. She had the feeling that there was something Alucard wasn't telling her. Alucard simply disappeared into mist and vanished back to his room, reflecting on the pin he saw in the one boy's hand. Quite the familiar pin.

Down in the dungeon, Joshua and Neku sat across a stark wooden table from the old butler Walter. Seras leaned against the stone wall behind him, watching the two. Joshua, in turn, watched her.

"Alright boys," Walter began, "allow me to lay down the rules: I will ask you a question, you will give me an answer. If the answer you give doesn't satisfy me, I will fish out the answer I want. Do we understand each other?"

"Of course," Joshua said happily, turning his eyes away from Seras. Neku nodded, still annoyed about the loss of his headphones. His ears felt naked.

"Very good. First question: what are your names?"

"Yoshiya Kiryu," Joshua replied instantly. "But my friends call me Joshua. You may as well." His gaze turned back to Seras. She suddenly began sweating under his glance and fidgeted against the wall.

Walter looked at the silent Neku. "And you?" Neku stayed silent for a while; eyes closed as if he were concentrating.

After a moment, he responded. "Neku Sakuraba." His eyes remained closed.

"Very good," Walter said. "Now, where do you come from?"

"Shibuya, Japan," Joshua said, again turning his eyes back to Walter.

"That's quite a way from here," Walter said. "How did you two young ones make that trip?"

Neku opened his eyes. "Well, I actually 'tripped' and landed here."

"We came by the portal," Joshua injected.

Walter leaned forward. "That's quite the accomplishment. How'd you manage that little trick?" Joshua smiled openly.

"Just something I know how to do. It's not so hard when you know how." Joshua looked at Seras again. She was quickly becoming irritated the more he watched her. His eyes were like mysterious daggers; she knew they had meaning, but they were unreadable, and they just kept piercing through her heart and head.

"Hmm," Walter hummed, unaware of Seras' turmoil. "Very well then, I'll cut to the chase: why are you here?"

"Well," Joshua said, this time keeping his eyes on Seras. "As I told your master outside, I'm here to find my friend. I didn't even mean to fall in your estate; that's just where the portal appeared..."

Seras suddenly couldn't take anymore and cut in, yelling. "Stop staring at me, why do you keep staring at me?!"

"Miss Victoria!" Walter yelled. Joshua was still staring at Seras, straight into her eyes. What was he doing to her? His eyes were so calm, his smile so warm, and yet Seras' head was exploding. She gripped it, trying to keep her brain from bursting out.

"Gyaaaaaaaah!" She screamed. Walter jumped up and took her in his arms. He led her outside the room and shut the door. Neku could hear her cries through the stone.

"Sorry about that," Joshua said. "I don't much care for questioning."

"Of course, you don't." Neku leaned back and studied the cracks in the ceiling.

Joshua pulled out his phone, which he didn't have when the mercenaries searched him and started texting. He spoke to Neku. "Do you still have your *Player Pin?"

Neku pulled at his shirt collar, revealing a black pin hidden under his shirt. It had a strange white skull on the front. "Of course."

Joshua glanced at him, smiling conspiratorially. "So you know why we're here then?"

Neku looked back at Joshua. "Yep. I couldn't read her."

His smile grew wider, and a picture appeared on Joshua's phone. "Of course you couldn't." He studied the picture. She was so young when it was taken, it seemed unreal.

"Seras Victoria, London's lost composer." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Definition time!
> 
> Players pin-
> 
> The Player Pin is the first pin that every Player acquires as he or she starts the Reapers' Game. It is the only pin shown in the game that does not require a pact in order to have an extra Player Pin, however, other players only need one for a normal Game. The Player Pin prevents the wielder from being scanned or imprinted. This also repels the effects of the 'O-pin'.
> 
> The Player Pin has one active psych called Scan. It is a (B) psych, requiring the pin to be tapped in order to activate. Once a Player scans, he or she will be able to tune into the thoughts of others and scan for Noise to battle.
> 
> Sanae Hanekoma-Sanae Hanekoma is a major character in The World Ends with You. He is the Reapers' Game's Producer. He also influenced Neku by being his idol as the artist CAT who influenced many Pins in the game. He is also known as a fallen angel.


	3. The London Underground

Seras sat against the wall, gasping for air. Her head was calming down, but her nerves were still strung up. Walter stood above her, unsure what to do.

"What was that?" he asked, trying to cover up his frustration over being interrupted.

"I... I don't know," Seras admitted." H-he just kept staring at me. Over and over and OVER AND OVER AND OVER!" She was screaming by the end of it. Walter crouched down and placed his hands on her shoulders.

"Calm down Miss Victoria," he pleaded. "This is no way for a soldier to act!"

Seras clasped her mouth closed: he was right. She was stronger than that. She collected herself and looked into Walter's eyes, shaking mildly. "Sorry."

Walter smiled comfortingly. "That's better. Now, go to your room and calm yourself. In this state of mind you're not going to help me here." Seras hesitated for a moment, saddened by his blatant statement that she was useless to him, then nodded and walked away.

Of course you're useless to him now, Seras thought, you were like putty in that kid's hands. Stupid! Then she began to think more about what it was Joshua actually did to her: all he did was stare at her, that was enough to tear her apart from the inside. But no... he wasn't just staring, she could feel it. There was suppressed power their, power he used to break her. What else could he be capable of, I wonder?

"Shit!" Seras spun around and saw Walter running up the stairs in a panic. He was calling for Integra.

Seras took off running, down the hall to the dungeons. Idiot Seras, idiot! How did they get here in the first place? A fucking portal! She burst through the door, and her suspicions were confirmed: the room was empty. Joshua and Neku had escaped, right from under their noses.

The Hellsing Manor was thrown into an uproar: the entirety of the Wild Geese were ordered to search every centimeter of the estate. They looked in storage closets, in chimneys, they were sent down into the deepest depths of the manor, to places many men didn't even know existed. Alucard and Seras were on the hunt as well; Seras took to the roof of the mansion and watched the ground with eyes that no human could use while Alucard searched the deep, dark places that the Wild Geese would never find. But neither high nor low could the two boys be found.

They had simply vanished. Even Neku's pins and headphones were missing, taken right out of a soldier's pockets.

Hours past and it was very nearly morning when Seras grew too tired to continue.

"Giving up so easily?" She could hear Alucard's voice, but he was nowhere around. He had a bad habit of doing that, she thought. "There are two potentially dangerous trespassers in our home, and you wish to sleep?"

"Master," Seras said out loud, rubbing her eyes. "I won't be any good for a search if I'm so tired. Besides, it's nearly day."

She could feel Alucard's disapproval. "Do what you will, Police Girl." Seras sighed with some relief and climbed down the manor. She walked through the various troops of the Wild Geese, who were far more tired than Seras but wouldn't dare stop searching in fear of Integra and Alucard.

Poor bastards, she thought. Her room didn't take long to reach, and she could tell that it had been searched by the men. Most of her drawers were open, and her clothes weren't in the proper order. I take it back; she thought vengefully, let them keep working. Seras closed the room from men and the sun alike and settled into her coffin. It was still very cramped and uncomfortable to her.

"You know, I thought your room would be a tad more decorated." Seras shot up and reached for where her gun was, but grasped at empty air. There, just in front of her, was Joshua, smiling like he wasn't being hunted by a hundred soldiers and a vampire. Behind him, leaning against the wall, was her rifle.

Her mind raced on what her options were: call for the soldiers? Joshua would be able to escape before they got here. Try and capture him herself? She was certainly faster than him, and she could overpower him in close combat.

She heard music coming from her left, and she turned to see Neku leaning against that wall. He was turning a pin between his fingers. Even if Seras could catch Joshua, Neku was bound to hit her before she got to him. Her only chance was her gun, and that was behind Joshua. At the moment, Seras was stuck.

"You're very quiet," Joshua said. "Silence really doesn't suit you Seras. I'm sure you have some very good ideas that people would want to hear."

Her eyes squinted. "You know my name?"

"Among other things," Joshua said casually. "For example, I know about your vampiric master Alucard. Quite the character, wouldn't you agree?" Seras stayed silent. "Well, I find him interesting. Cheating death for so many years, it does things to a man. Well, if Alucard was a man, but we both know he's something very different." Seras just watched him. Joshua could tell that she wasn't paying attention to him.

"But I suppose that's not important. The important one here is you, Seras. You're the reason we're here." Joshua stepped forward, away from the gun. Seras could see an opportunity rising. He just needed to come a little closer.

"Tell me Seras," Joshua smiled. "What do you remember of the time between when your parents died and when you wanted to become an officer of the law?" Seras' mind froze in shock.

"How do you know that?" she asked, paralyzed.

"I told you; I know many things," Joshua's smile widened. He looked more sinister than anything Seras had ever seen now, in the dark of her room. His eyes seemed to light up and cast shadows over his pale face.

"Here's another question; have you ever seen someone running through the street or through a building like they were late for something, but no one ever noticed them except you or your master?"

What kind of question was that? What did it have to do with Seras? Of course, she hadn't seen anything like that. But Joshua just smiled away like nobody's business.

"Just remember that question," he said, and then Joshua and Neku were gone. They'd disappeared into the floor like a drop of water. Seras sat up for a long while. She wasn't tired anymore.

Nights passed in relative lethargy. No one ever did find Joshua and Neku, and while Integra remained furious there was really nothing to do about it until they appeared again.

It was a day when Seras saw what very well could have changed the rest of her life if she hadn't seen it. She was packing up her gun from a morning of training, and out of the corner of her eye, she noticed someone on the grounds of Hellsing.

It was a girl, no older than thirteen by the look of her. She was running toward the manor, but wasn't focused on it; she was turning her head quickly from side to side like she was looking for something she lost.

"Hey," Seras called to the girl. "Are you lost? This is private property; you have to leave." The girl froze like a deer when she heard Seras' voice. Seras took a step forward, and the girl bolted off. "Wait, where are you going?" Seras ran after her, but the girl was fast enough to keep even ahead of her vampire speed. High above them in the manor, Alucard watched as Seras took chase of the girl.

First the boy with the pins, now this girl, Alucard thought. Why do the dead so suddenly flock us? Could it be the boy Joshua calling them? What is his plan... Alucard couldn't help but smile. "Oh, this is becoming most interesting."

The two ran for miles, all the way into the city of London. Seras was quickly running out of energy to run, but the girl didn't even seem to stumble after such a long distance. Seras had to stop and breathe, and soon the girl was out of sight.

"*gasp gasp* Damnit!" She kicked the ground and looked out over the street. It was empty, except for her. Not even a car drove by.

"Fast one, isn't she?" Seras jumped at the sound of Joshua's voice behind her. She turned and saw him smiling at her. Neku stood behind him, buried in his headphones.

"You know, you have a bad habit of appearing out of nowhere."

"You have no idea," Neku said. Seras didn't know how he could hear her over his music.

Joshua walked past Seras and looked into the distance. "So tell me Seras, did you notice anything special about the girl you just chased? Besides her incredible speed and stamina?" He pulled out his phone.

Seras looked at him, wondering just what he was up to. "No."

"Well then, let's take a closer look, shall we?" Suddenly Seras was falling through the ground. The street rose above her, and she was engulfed by a black void. Neku and Joshua fell beside her; Neku was yelling something, she really couldn't hear it over the rush of air, and Joshua looked very calm, typing something into his phone.

Then, before Seras could put together what had happened, she hit the ground. Above her, she saw a hole in the sky like the one above Hellsing close. Joshua and Neku were standing above her. Neku offered his hand.

"The first time is the worst; I can tell you that. After that, you get used to it." Seras took his hand, and he pulled her up.

"Do I want to get used to it, though?" Neku shrugged and pressed his headphones closer to his ears.

"Here we go," Joshua said behind her. "Look down there." Seras turned to see where he was pointing to and saw the girl she was chasing earlier. The girl appeared to be talking to another kid, this one a boy, in a crowd of people. "Now do you notice anything strange about the girl and boy?"

"No," Seras said. "They're just talking."

"Really look, though. Look at the people around them." Seras sighed and looked again. She watched the crowd around them, but nothing very interesting happened. Her eyes followed one guy walking towards the two kids. Maybe that was their dad, coming to get them. But then, rather than stop or go around the kids, he walked straight through them! He didn't even blink; he just passed right through them like they were air.

Seras was taken aback, and Joshua next to her smiled. "Now you see it, don't you? The other people don't see the boy and girl. They aren't even on the same plane as them."

"Are..." Seras paused, still wrapping her head around what she just saw. "Are they ghosts?"

"In a way. They are dead; that is certain. Ghosts, though, that's not totally accurate. They're more like... lost souls, let's say. Looking for something."

"That sounds exactly like ghosts," Seras pointed out.

"Call them what you will," Joshua shrugged.

Neku interrupted them. "They're Players in the Reaper Game," he explained. Seras turned to him.

"Reaper Game? What's..." She saw a flash in the corner of her eye and heard a scream. She turned and saw the two kids facing something. It was strange, like an animal, but warped, discolored. It charged the kids, and Seras made to jump in and help them. Joshua placed a hand on her shoulder.

"You can't help. It's against the rules for the living..." he paused and looked at her with what looked like condemnation. "Or in your case, half-living, to intrude." Seras shook off his hand and looked back to the kids. She was about to pounce anyway, rules or not when the girl waved her arm and lightning struck the beast. The boy then charged it and a spear of light appeared in his hands, bursting through it. Seras looked closer and saw pins in their hands.

She looked at Neku, who was watching them fight with a blank expression. She remembered his own pins.

"Are you..." she stopped, unsure how to ask.

"I was," Neku said dryly. "That's the point of the Reaper Game: they're trying to come back to life. And they can only do that by winning." Seras looked back at the kids. The boy was sitting on the ground as if he had been injured. The girl was kneeling over him, waving another pin over his body.

"People don't win a lot, do they?"

"It's very rare," Joshua said. "But when it does happen, they come back better for it." He looked at Neku. "Isn't that right, 'Phones?'" Neku looked at him with contempt, and Joshua laughed. Seras was completely lost.

"Hehe, anyway," Joshua continued. "The games are hosted by, as you would guess, beings called Reapers. They used to be the souls of the dead, but rather than come back to life they chose to remain in the land of the dead, to rule over the Players. They're led by an ultimate ruler of the games, a Composer. They make the rules of the game."

"Whatever rules they want," Neku added ruefully.

Seras looked at Joshua. She could tell that he had some history with the Reaper Game, but how? Was he a Player like Neku? Or was he something more. "Why are you telling me all this?"

Joshua was silent for a moment, gathering his thoughts. "Let me tell you a story Seras: many years ago, the Composer for the London Reaper Games wasn't a grown man, or an angel, or someone of great power. It was a little girl, no older than six. No one knew why she had been chosen as Composer, and many of the Reapers under her were furious. But her Reaper games were fair, and she led with the kindness and innocence a child is known for. But then, after a few years, she disappeared. No one could find her, and someone else had to become Composer in her place."

Joshua turned to Seras and looked seriously into her eyes. "Seras Victoria, you were the London Composer all those years ago." He smiled deviously. "And we're here to put you back on the throne.""Could you repeat that?" 

* * *

Many miles away, in a dark room, a man with thin black wings knelt before a throne. Upon it sat a woman, tall and thin, with hair as black as Death's cloak and eyes green as sickness.

The winged man swallowed nervously. "S-Seras Vic-Victoria discovered the G-Game, Miss Annabell. She knows about h-her past."

There was a rush of air, and the man was pulled up by his throat. Annabell looked into his eyes with deep rage. "You will call me Composer King, you squandering idiot!" She threw him against the wall, and he hit the floor with a horrific crunch.

"Y-yes Composer King!"

She stomped her foot down on the Reaper. "Understand me," she said, instantly calm and pleasant. Her voice took on a much smoother, menacing tone than her earlier beastly screaming. "I want Victoria dead, now. Not tomorrow, not next week, NOW. She isn't going to get in my way. And if she isn't dead the next time I see you, well," she laughed and bent over the Reaper. "Just believe me, when I say you don't want to disappoint me."

The Reaper nodded, terrified, and ran out of the room. Annabell sat back down on her throne and let herself be absorbed by her thoughts. Seras Victoria. I should have killed you long ago.

Behind her, hidden in the darkness, a man stood frozen in his place.

"Oh Reece," Annabell called. "Be sure Victoria dies, will you? That one is too incompetent to finish her off, so I'll need you to take care of it." Reece was silent. Could it be? Seras was found! She was alive after all.

"Reece?" He snapped to attention.

"Of course, Composer King."

"Please," she spun around and looked at him. Her eyes were warm and seductive, and her smile was splendid. "Call me Annabell."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Definition time and it short and sweet  
> Reapers (死神 Shinigami?, "death god" in the Japanese version) are a type of administrator in the Game. They are identified by the black wings on their back, which are a manifestation of their supernatural powers.  
> Reapers are recruited from Players who have survived previous runs of the game. Any such player, provided they are strong enough, may choose to become a Reaper if they wish.


	4. Confusion

High in the London skyline, atop a building in the dead of night, stood the tree Joshua, Neku, and Seras. They had been silent for minutes now.

"You've made a mistake," Seras said.

"No, I'm sure I haven't," Joshua retorted.

"But I was never some 'Composer' when I was a kid," Seras argued. "I would remember if I was!"

"Would you though?"

"I have memories from back then: I went to school, I played with other kids, I did normal stuff. I never dealt with ghosts or 'Players' or whatever!"

"Memories are a tricky matter Seras. What's to say that you don't only remember PART of your childhood?" Seras struggled for words. This was all too ridiculous; she knew that it wasn't true. She remembered all of her childhood; she couldn't have forgotten anything. She couldn't have been in contact with the dead because then... because...

Seras stifled the memory. "It's not true," she said simply. "It's just not." Joshua scratched his head, considering how he could convince her. Neku watched silently. _She's surprisingly cool about all this,_ he thought. _Most people wouldn't have even talked about the idea of being a Composer; it's really too unbelievable. Then again, vampires aren't that believable either._

"Look, Seras," Joshua said. "I know that this is hard to believe, but you need to trust me on this."

"Trust you," Seras said, becoming annoyed. "Why should I trust you? I don't even know you! In the time I've known you, you snuck into my room, dropped me down a hole, and attacked my head! Now you want me just to accept that you're here to help me regain some title that I never had or wanted. No, that's not something that's going to happen! I don't want any of this!" And with that, Seras turned around and walked away from the two.

Joshua was about to object when suddenly something fell on top of Seras. A giant black thing in the shape of a wolf grabbed her in its jaw and shook her violently.

"Noise!" Neku snatched a pin from his pocket and pointed it at the giant wolf Noise. A bolt of lightning shot down and struck it in the back. The Noise growled in pain and dropped Seras, who was nearly torn in half. She was lifted off the ground by nothing and carried over behind Neku and Joshua.

She pushed herself up and looked at the two in front of her, and then at the Noise beyond them. It was looking dead into her eyes, snarling horribly.

"You should stay there," Joshua said, flipping open his cellphone. "We got this." Seras could swear that she saw the two boys smile at the wolf like it was a present on Christmas morning. They reminded her of Alucard at that moment.

The Noise charged them, slobber splashing from its fangs. Neku raised his arms, showing a pin held perfectly between each of his fingers. One flashed as he swung his arm, and three large ice stalagmites jutted out of the building's roof into the wolf. With another swing of Neku's arm, five great boulders appeared in the sky and crushed it. A cloud of shrapnel hid it momentarily, then suddenly it was in front of Neku, jaw open and hungry. It bit down hard where Neku was, but Neku was no longer there. He appeared from nowhere behind it, and with another swing of his hand cast a flaming ball into the Noise's back.

Joshua jumped high into the air but did not return to the ground. He floated in the air, above the Noise, typing into his phone. A beam of blinding light shot from the sky onto the beast, and it roared angrily. It turned to Joshua and leapt at him snarling. Joshua smiled at the beast, and another lazor came from behind him, sending it back down to the roof with an incredible _thud._ Seras could feel the structure shake under her from its weight.

Neku appeared in front of the Noise and, to Seras' additional astonishment, slashed into its flesh with his finger tips. She saw gashes go into it, but no blood came from the creature. It reared back and snapped at Neku again, but he was gone as quickly as he came. Seras saw holes open up in the sky, like the one she had fallen through previously, but instead of people, cars fell from them and landed on the Noise, only to disappear once they bounced off it.

Joshua returned to the roof in front of the Wolf Noise, and Neku stood behind it. A blue aura overtook Joshua, and he smiled, looking past the wolf at Neku.

"Work for you?"

A red aura engulfed Neku. "What do you think?"

They thrust their hands at the Noise, and suddenly ice and fire burst out from them. The elements met on the beast, and with a final great cry of pain and anger, disappeared under their power. When the flames settled and the ice melted, all that the wolf was was nowhere to be seen.

Seras watched this show awe-stricken. What incredible power these two possessed! It was unreal and almost as horrifying as the power she'd seen from Alucard, if not more so.

 _*Click*_ Seras froze when she heard the metallic strike behind her head. She dared to turn her head back, and then a bullet burst through her head in a spout of blood. Neku and Joshua turned and ran to her at the sound, and the winged man with the gun began to flee. He took off into the air, flying as fast as he could.

Then he felt a hand grasp his ankle and slam him down into the building roof. He crunched into a ball and looked up to see Seras, with two holes in the sides of her head still leaking blood, looking down on him with red eyes.

"No no no," the Reaper squealed. "I shot you. I shot you!" He aimed his gun and shot her again, straight through the chest. Seras recoiled for a moment, then stood back up. He yelled and unloaded his bullets into her, but none of them pierced her heart.

"Die! Die God damn it!" A clawed hand grabbed the Reaper by the face and brought it up very slowly. Seras looked into his eyes for what he felt were minutes, and then she crushed his head into the cement over and over, until nothing was in her hand except a bloody mush. His body disintegrated and was blown away by the breeze. Seras looked down at her hand, covered in blood and brain matter. She seemed to study it for a while. Then she wiped it off on her pants without a word.

"That was a Reaper," Joshua said. "A keeper of the Reaper Games. Now why would one of them want you dead, I wonder?" Seras turned back to see Joshua smiling with an air of victory. She frowned and looked above her into the night.

"Seras..." This was a new voice. The three turned to see a man standing at the edge of the roof, looking at Seras with horrified shock. The man was tall, with scruffy brown hair and a lazy hooded sweatshirt. His eyes were deep blue like Seras' had been, but now only contrasted to her red gaze. "What have you done?"

Seras' fists tightened at her sides. "You know, I'm beginning to hate it when people I don't know seem to know me." The man inhaled a short gasp and recoiled back. His feet left the roof but remained supported by the air below them.

"Don't know... Seras, what do you-" Seras lunged at the man, eyes burning with fury. She hit him across the face and sent him falling down the side of the building. But he appeared again behind her. Neku readied his pins, but Joshua stuck his arm out to stop him, shaking his head silently.

"Seras, what are you doing?! It's me! It's Reece!" Seras spun around and ran at him again. This time, when she attacked, though, she reached out and struck nothing. Reece backed away from her, confounded.

Seras turned and faced him, growling. "Why did that guy try to kill me? Did you send him?!" She charged Reece for the third time, arm stretching for his throat. In a moment clouded by motion, Reece reached up and grabbed her hand, crushing it and pinning Seras to her knees.

He looked down on her for a second with only a blank, condescending stare. He squeezed her hand and felt bones snap between his knuckles, and heard Seras utter a single cry. Then, as quickly as it lasted, Reece's uncaring was eradicated and a look of confusion and horror. He looked down at his now bloodied hand, then down at Seras. She was watching him with a look of pure hatred, her red eyes gleaming in the moonlight. Reece turned his back on the sight with a weak whimper and ran off the rooftop and into the night.

Joshua and Neku walked to Seras' side as she picked herself off the ground. She watched the place Reece had ran off to, but could not see him.

"That wasn't a Reaper," Neku said. Seras turned to them; her eyes were turning back to their original blue, but a hint of rage hung on her face as she cradled her mangled hand. Neku pulled out one of his pins and waved it at her, and the hand, as well as her gun, shot wounds, slowly healed.

"No," Joshua said. "It wasn't a Reaper." He opened his cell phone and scrolled through a few texts. After a moment, he looked up at Seras. "But make no mistake, he is in league with the party that wants you dead Seras." A little smile crossed his face. "How deep that allegiance goes, however, has yet to be seen."

Seras looked down silently, reflecting. He knew her; he was confused. He's at least associated with the Reaper that tried to kill her. Could she really have been...

"This changes nothing," Seras said, looking back up at Joshua.

He smiled in his casual way. "Of course not."

* * *

 

"Ah, Reece darling, you're back." Annabell King sat atop her throne, looking down at her Producer, who'd just come through the door. She smiled kindly at his return. "Is she dead?"

Reece refused to meet eyes with the Composer. He was too distraught. "She was shot through the head." Annabell smiled and rolled her finger on the arm of her throne. "But... Seras still lives."

Like that Annabell's smile shattered. Her body tensed up and shook slightly. "What?"

"She... Seras could not be killed. And I'm not sure why." Reece suddenly began whimpering, and tears rolled down his cheeks. Annabell watched him piteously and walked over to him. She wrapped her arms about his chest and eased him into her shoulder.

"There there, my darling, don't be so sad. I don't blame you for your failure, how could you have known she was beyond human?" _I wouldn't cry over that;_ Reece thought bitterly, but he knew better than to speak it aloud. She would be furious if she knew why he cried.

"But," she continued, looking into Reece's eyes. "We can't just give up. We have to find out why she could take a shot to the head; find out her weakness! And then we'll finish her off." Annabell held Reece to her breast. "And then you and I will be allowed to live in peace for the rest of eternity." Reece couldn't help but smile a little between sobs. The idea sounded wonderful.


	5. Memories Past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An enormous warning since were going into Seras life as a child this include that famous scene from Episode 7 about Seras parents. We are now following the timeline, and this story will get more violent if you are not a fan please turn back now other than that please read the other note and enjoy the story
> 
> One quick major note I have gotten threatening PM about the section of the story with Seras mother. No that was not originally in the original drafts it was both something we argued about for a bit but later came to an agreement on. We only had a bit of what Seras mother was like and leaned towards the father as a saintly one. The whole little thing in Seras mother flashback is by no means canon, and we hope it is never canon. I know it sounded stupid and if it did we majorly apologize keep in mind most of it was more of showing how every coin has two sides. 
> 
> (Chaos here before you begin this chapter, please understand while we do make these chapter together this was at the time where Mizuki the main writer was in the hospital after a very unfortunate accident. While a majority of the idea were hers before she entered the hospital, I did almost all the writing. And despite the protest of Mizuki while she was in the hospital I admit I rushed it. So to those reviewers out there I take responsibility for this chapter despite Mizuki protest that we both are equal in our work I would feel beyond bad if she is to blame even though she was hospitalized and warned me multiple times to slow down. So if you have any concerns with Chapter 5 direct them mainly at me. Thank you.  
> -Chaos
> 
> One last note Italics are used for the Higher ups.

Merry laughter echoed through the bright halls of the Reaper Headquarters. Down in the main hall, the six Reapers sat around each other, laughing and trying not to spill their whiskey.

One tall Reaper at one end of the group wiped his eyes and leaned over his drink. "Hahaha, so this Player kid is shaking against the wall, waving his hand at the bat Noise like they were bees, and then the shark jumps up and swallows her like a grape! I couldn't tell if her brother was sad or terrified, but either way, I swear to God he pissed himself on the spot!" The company burst out laughing even harder than before. The Reaper telling the story shot his whiskey down and refilled his glass.

"Hey, that's nothing!" another Reaper said, half-belching. "You should've seen what Anny did to a team on the fetch mission! Tell 'em Anny." He nudged the Reaper to his right with his elbow, and she jumped up startled.

Annabelle looked at the company, looking half-dazed. "Huh?"

"Tell these guys the story! You know, with the buck Noise!"

She blinked questioningly. "Oh… uh…"

"Bah, don't bother her," another Reaper said, shooting down his third whiskey. "She's still out of it after Ol' Georgie ascended to the Higher Plane, lucky bastard."

The Reapers smiled collectively. "Good Ol' Georgie," the story-telling Reaper said fondly. "Best Composer out there, I'm telling ya. He always came up with the best games. Like, you guys remember the one where the Players had to climb up Big Ben and steal one of the numbers?"

"Haha, yeah, and the bat Noise would swoop down at them and tear out their hair?" They laughed again, remembering all the Players that fell off and had to start all over again.

"Yeah," the Reaper beside Annabelle said. "Ol' Georgie was a crazy motherfucker wasn't he? Those Angels must be pretty nuts to let him up there."

Another female Reaper with dark red hair leaned forward and whispered. "Maybe they actually ARE crazy." She chuckled as the other Reapers considered this. "Eternity can do things to a guy. We've all been around for longer than the average life rate of humans, and look at us."

The storyteller smiled coyly at her. "Are you implying that we aren't mentally sound?"

"I don't know, ask the kid who wet himself that we were all just laughing at. He probably thinks you've got a couple of screws loose."

"Plus," another Reaper said, "just look at Mr. Nayake." The Reapers became silent at the mention of their Producer. "Have you ever once seen him react to something? Even? Name one time." They all remained silent. Annabelle turned her head slightly as if she was never listening until then.

"He's never happy, sad, angry, excited, nothing. I have not seen that guy's expression change once. It's like he's always disappointed by the world like he gave up on it a century ago."

The Reapers heard a single, shallow laugh and turned to see Annabelle smiling. She's been one of their comrades for half a century, but even still her smile disturbed little parts of them.

"You've never seen him on a mission," she said humorously.

"Mr. Nayake doesn't go on missions," the red-haired Reaper said. "He's a Producer; they don't do missions."

"Nayake does," Annabelle contradicted. "The Composer paired us together on one, a long time ago." The other Reapers were silent, confused more than they had been in a long time. "And when you see Nayake on a mission, you see the man, not the Producer. He doesn't care about anything except completing whatever task the Composer gives him."

"Huh," the storytelling Reaper grunted. "Wonder what happens to that guy when he comes back here."

"Well it makes sense, in a way," the Reaper beside Annabelle said. "What other Producer lives in the same place as the Composer? They're supposed to spend their time in the Real Ground, not slum it with the rest of us."

"And yet here he stays..." The group silently shut their eyes around the room, as if the Producer could be right in there listening to them.

One Reaper shivered. "Can we change the subject? That guy gives me the creeps, and I don't much care to talk about him so much." Annabelle smiled slyly.

"Alright," she said, "since no one else has brought it up yet, I suppose I will: why do you think the new Composer hasn't been announced yet?"

The storyteller paused above his drink. "Why do you care? It isn't our business Anny."

"Like hell, it isn't," Annabelle said coldly. "The week is nearly over, and we don't have any more reserve Games. They need to appoint one."

"Come on Annie, you know the way this works: when a Composer ascends then the Conductor below him takes his place. There are probably just some formalities that need to be filled out before the Butcher can become Composer."

"I don't know," the red haired Reaper said, "do we really want Butch as the Composer? Ol' Georgie was creative and fun. Butch is, well... Butch. I don't really see him making good Games."

"Maybe he'll make an arena tournament, gladiator style. Every Noise is a Black Noise." The storyteller chuckled to himself.

Annabelle shook her head. "No, it wouldn't take this long. There has to be a reason behind the delay. Like, I don't know..." Annabelle looked down into her own drink. "Maybe they found someone better." The group became silent once again. The storyteller leaned back.

"Like who?" he asked, suddenly serious. "You?" It was as if the air itself caught fire around them. Annabelle and the storyteller watched each other's eyes, not saying a word. The other Reapers forgot how to speak and just sipped at their whiskeys.

The tension broke at the sound of the opening door, and the tension returned when they saw Mr. Nayake poke his head through it.

"The new Composer has been decided." The six sat up straighter, Annabelle especially. They waited for their Producer to continue, but he just stood there looking down, as if deeply troubled.

"Well?" the red haired Reaper asked. "Who is it?"

Mr. Nayake looked back up at them, his brows furrowed. When he spoke, it wasn't in the monotone they were all used to: it was electric, laced with what could have either been excitement or rage. Based on what he said next, it was clearly rage.

"Seras Victoria. A little girl!" And with that, he slammed the door shut.

* * *

 

"Seras, come to dinner sweety!" The little six-year-old girl looked up from her toys at her mother.

"Okay!" Seras picked herself up, wobbling a bit, and ran to the table that her mother set. Her father sat next to her, reading some official-looking papers that Seras couldn't make out.

"Daddy," she said, "what are you reading?" He looked up from the documents at his daughter and smiled.

"Oh, just some work things honey. It's incredibly boring." Seras frowned at him, unsatisfied. He raised his eyebrows and chuckled. "Not enough for ya huh? Alright then: these are reports the other officers made about some of the recent activity of a certain gang that's been causing a lot of trouble recently."

"Honey," Seras' mother interrupted him, carrying their dinner. "You know the rules, no bringing work to the dinner table."

He smiled playfully. "Of course dear." He slipped the papers under his plate.

Seras looked at the papers under her father's plate. "Why don't you just arrest them?"

"Well," he said, swallowing a mouthful of fish. "We don't have the evidence that we need to arrest them."

"But they're doing wrong things." Seras ignored her fish and looked up at her father. He looked rather disturbed for reasons that she didn't understand yet.

"Yes sweetie, yes they are. But the way the law works is that in order for bad people to go to jail, we need evidence to prove that they did those bad things. Like their fingerprints." He pinched at Seras' fingertip, and she giggled. "Or their hair!" He rustled her hair with his hand, and she laughed harder, shaking her head away from her father's giant hand. Her mother just smiled and at her dinner: she'd tried to stop them before, but she couldn't keep her husband or daughter from playing at the table. They just weren't allowed to leave until they were finished.

Some time passed, and Seras was nearly finished eating, when out of the corner of her eye she saw a figure out the window. It was a man, with brown hair and broad shoulders. His eyes were the same shade of blue as Seras' eyes, and they were staring right at her with a look that she couldn't quite identify. He looked sad in a way, but the expression was too hard and cold to be sadness.

"Daddy, someone's standing out the window."

"What?" Her father spun around to the window. The man was gone now. He got up and pulled open a drawer, picking up a pistol. "Wait here," he said and walked out the door.

A few minutes passed, and Seras' father came back in. "No one was there." Her mother sighed with relief. "Seras, are you sure you saw someone?"

Seras shrunk a bit. She didn't like being questioned. "Yes."

"What did he look like?"

"He had short brown hair, blue eyes, and was tall with big shoulders." He nodded and rubbed her back.

"That's my girl. If you see him again, tell your mother or me straight away, alright?" Seras nodded, but she didn't think the man would show up again, whoever he was. And he didn't appear again for the rest of the day.

* * *

It was the dark of night, and Seras slept soundly in her bed, but she was not alone in her room. At the end of the bed, standing imposingly above her, was Reece Nayake.

Why this girl, he thought. This little girl who doesn't even know the word Composer yet. Why was she chosen? Reece sighed. It wasn't his place to question the Higher Ups. They gave the orders, and he obeyed them.

Seras' small form began to stir. Her eyes shot open as if she felt Reece's presence. She slowly arched her back up to see him standing there across from her. She was completely silent, and her eyes were wide in what was likely terror.

"Seras Victoria," Reece said evenly, his voice echoing in the dark room. Seras didn't respond. Reece knelt down to the floor, bowing his head. "I've come to serve you, Composer Victoria!" Reece waited there, kneeling, for quite a while. Seras slowly sat up in her bed, slid out of the covers, and cautioned toward Reece. She extended a hand, very slowly, and brushed it against Reece's cheek. He flinched slightly, and Seras jumped with a squeak. The two looked into each others eyes, their identical blue eyes. No, not identical: Seras could see the age in his eyes, the lifetimes of his past.

Seras opened her lips a bit before speaking. "You are real." Reece was surprised to find himself taken aback by this. He expected some sort of fear or hesitance from this girl, but she just walked up to him and touched his face as if he were a docile puppy. He was, even more, surprised to find himself flash a smile at the thought.

"Yes," he said. "I am very real."

Seras turned her head a bit. "What's your name?"

"Mr. Nayake."

Seras chuckled. "That's a silly name." Reece raised an eyebrow. What was with this girl? So calm, so present. No six-year-old is like this.

"Mr. Niky," Seras said. Reece flashed a smile again at the girl's infantile lisp. He never thought about how difficult his name actually was. "What's a Composer? And why am I one?"

And observant too! Reece thought with astonishment. This girl could easily be more advanced than anyone else in her class. Hell, anyone else in her age group. Reece stood up and looked down at the inquisitive girl.

"Well, a Composer is someone who makes things. You, Seras Victoria, are a very specific Composer, though. You only need to make one thing."

"What's that?" Reece opened his hand to her, remembering that he's supposed to smile around young children. It had been so long since he interacted with one that it slipped his mind before then.

"I can show you if you'll let me." Seras looked at the large hand for a moment, then at her closed bedroom door.

"You'll be back before morning," Reece said, reading her mind. "Your mommy and daddy won't notice that you left."

Seras looked back up at him. "Mommy? Don't you mean mummy?" Reece stopped and looked forward into space. Mummy? he thought. Seras laughed and took his hand.

"So where are we going?" He looked back down at Seras, smiling like it was nobody's business. As if they were just going on a midday walk through the park and they were going to get ice cream later.

Reece couldn't help but offer her a sly half-smile. "You'll see." He snapped his fingers; the room shook three times, and they were gone.

In a second they reappeared in front of a tower in the middle of London. In the distance Big Ben was visible, reading 3:00 in the morning. Seras looked around, awestruck by what just happened. She gurgled a few question like sounds but was ultimately speechless.

Reece chuckled and pulled lightly on her hand. "Come on, there are some people you should meet." He started walking, and Seras nearly tripped, not hearing him. She followed close to him but continued to look around. She had never been in the big city part of London before, but she had seen it on television back at home when her parents watched the news. But those shows truly did not do justice to the sheer enormity of the city. Seras felt like a flea among the comparatively huge buildings.

She was led into the tower they appeared in front of and turned to go up the stairs. Seras looked back and saw an elevator on the nearby wall.

"Why are we taking the stairs?" she asked.

"Because where we're going can only be reached through the stairs."

"That's a dumb way to make it. What if someone who can't walk needs to go up there?"

Reece laughed silently. Leave it to children to ask "what if" instead of "how."

"Don't worry, no one who ever goes where we're going can't walk." He turned back to her. "They don't need to walk." Seras frowned, confused, but she didn't ask anything else for another four floors.

After a while, she spoke up again. "How did we get here?" Reece was silent for a moment as if he didn't hear her. "I think there's a word for it. Tele... not telephone, tele..."

"Teleport?" Reece offered amusedly.

"Yeah! Teleport, that's it." Reece couldn't help but chuckle a bit. Just then he felt a quick, small pressure hit his thigh. He froze and turned back to see Seras scowling up at him with a balled fist. His face twisted as if completely phased.

"Don't laugh at me!" Seras said, folding her arms. Reece stared at her, this little girl who just hit him, the Producer of all of London. She stared back up at him defiantly, unknowing of the power he possessed. No, not unknowing. Uncaring.

Taking a moment to think, Reece bowed deeply to Seras. "My apologies, Composer Victoria." Seras smiled and grabbed his hand.

"It's okay. Let's keep going!" She tugged on Reece's hand, and they continued up the stairs, now almost side by side. Reece involuntarily glanced at Seras every so often, thinking to himself. What a remarkable girl.

Several floors passed, and Seras was quickly becoming tired. She panted heavily, and Reece could feel her hand shaking in his. But not once did she ask to stop, or for him to carry her.

"Are you okay?" Reece asked. "Do you need a rest?"

She looked up at him. "How close are we?"

"Three more floors."

Seras looked straight up the path of the stairs. "I'm okay. We can keep going."

Two floors passed, and Seras' feet were beginning to drag. Her eyes began to wonder, trying to think past the exhaustion, and she noticed that the stairs were passing a strange-looking metal door.

"Roof Access" it read. Seras turned the other way, and she saw Reece starting up another set of stairs. She followed close behind, and at the top of the last staircase stood a blank purple door, void of any design or marking save its perfectly spherical door knob. Reece placed a key in the door, although Seras didn't see him reach into his pocket or hear the jingle of a key ring, and the door swung open into a brightly lit hallway.

"Composer Victoria," Reece said, extending his hand into the hallway. "Welcome to your palace."

For a few moments, Seras didn't move but stood frozen in the doorway. The hall wasn't anything special: it had doors going into other rooms, it separated into other hallways, and it had some pictures and other decorations hanging on the walls. But something about it felt off to Seras like it was alien to her. Alien, but at the same time welcoming in a way. The air itself was unfamiliar, but it knew her. Just like Reece, in a way.

"Most adults are normally put off by this place too," Reece said. "Even I was my first time, oh so long ago," He smirked a bit at the old memory to himself. Seras looked up at him, uncertain as to what she should do. Part of her wanted to go running out of the building, back home to her parents. But another part of her wanted to go in the door, it wanted nothing more than to breathe this strange air and learn its secrets. And ultimately, that part of her yelled the loudest. She picked her head up, took in a deep breathe, and strode past the door. Reece followed, shutting the door behind her.

For what Seras thought were hours, her head became incredibly fuzzy. The walls passed by her as if they were running the opposite way she walked, although she couldn't feel her feet and was, therefore, unsure if she even could walk.

Then, as quickly as it became blurry, Seras was suddenly thrown back into the clear world. She wasn't sure where she was because it certainly wasn't the bright hallway she had been in or even the building she and Reece had climbed. Seras found herself standing in a dark, empty room. Well, empty save for a large seat at the other end of the room. There were no lights anywhere, no windows, but Seras could still see the details of the room or the lack thereof.

A voice called out from behind her, quiet but also very loud. "This is your throne room. This is where you shall spend your time while you remain here, and also..." Seras spun around while the voice spoke, but she saw no one behind her. She looked around the room, fear growing in the pit of her stomach until she saw Reece standing beside the throne at the other wall. His hand was laid upon the back of the throne. "This is where you shall create your Games."

Seras stood frozen in that spot, more stunned by the events of the night than she thought was possible.

"My..." she hesitated, considering Reece's words. "Games?"

"Yes," Reece responded, beckoning Seras toward him. She obeyed and approached the throne that was hers. I have a throne, Seras thought. I'm like... the queen.

"I told you that as the Composer you would have to create a very special thing. That is the Reaper Game."

Seras shrunk a bit at the full name. "What's a Reaper Game? It sounds bad." She could feel her heart begin to sink as the full picture began to tease its way open. Fear began to return to Seras as she considered just what the picture might become when opened all the way.

"No Composer," Reece insisted, gently placing his hand on Seras' shoulder. "The Reaper Games are not bad. For many people, these Games are the most important Games of all time. People come from all over London to play this game, and to win it is more important to them than anything else in the whole world." Seras nodded, feeling the responsibility weigh on her shoulders.

"All you have to do," Reece continued, now kneeling to look into Seras' eyes. "Is make the rules and the goals. You say what each game is, and how it's meant to be played. You can make whatever game you want, anything you can think of!" Seras' eyes lit up a bit at this.

"Anything?" she asked, almost sounding excited.

"Anything at all! And it's my job as your Producer to make sure that the Players and the Reapers play by the rules you make."

Seras bent her brows. "Reapers?" A picture of a skeleton in a black cloak with a scythe on a flaming horse skeleton suddenly came to her mind, and Seras began to be afraid again.

"Oh, that's right! I almost forgot to introduce you." Reece stood up and snapped his fingers at the opposite wall. Just then a door opened that Seras hadn't seen before, and six people walked in, four men and two girls. When Seras looked at them, she noticed their strange thin, black wings almost hovering behind each person.

"Seras, these are your Reapers. Think of them like obstacles you can place in your games. They live to serve you and assist in all of your games."

Seras looked at them, then stepped down from her throne and walked up to them. She came up to a bony man with thinly cropped blonde hair. He was wearing noticeably old clothes, like the kind Seras saw in some of her King Arthur picture books. The man glanced at her face and looked away exasperatedly, almost spitting his unsatisfied sigh. Seras stared at him for a while, so long that the other Reapers started staring at him and Seras. The bony man began to fidget where he stood, becoming more and more uncomfortable. He crossed his arms, uncrossed them, stuck his hands in his pockets, took them back out, and then crossed his arms again in a span of forty-five seconds.

The sound of Seras' voice nearly made the Reapers jump after the long silence.

"Hi, I'm Seras." She stuck out her hand to the man and smiled cheerfully. "What's your name?"

The Reaper stared at Seras for a moment, then hesitantly took her hand. "Richard," he stated.

Seras shook Richard's hand, and he was surprised at just how strong her grip was. And even more than that, he was surprised to feel a sort of power radiate from her palm: not power like the Reapers had, or even like they sometimes felt from their last Composer. This was... warmer. "It's nice to meet you, Richard."

"Uhh," the Reaper mumbled, largely confused by the little girl. Then he felt a smile cross his face, and his voice became much more friendly. "Likewise." The two smiled at each other for a minute, and then Seras walked over a few steps and stood in front of the next Reaper. It was the story telling Reaper, standing tall above Seras. His long brown hair flowed casually over his shoulders and a few strands over his wings. He was wearing a long blue trench coat, and his breath smelled of alcohol. The smell reminded Seras of one of her father's officer friends, and she smiled especially wide when she offered her hand to him.

"Hi, I'm Seras," she said happily. "What's your name?"

The Reaper didn't react quite so much as Richard had before him, and was smiling and shaking her hand in an instant. "It's Malcolm, but my friends call me Oni."

"Can I call you Oni?"

"Of course," he responded with a wide smile. "And may I say it is a pleasure to meet you, Composer Seras." Reece scowled at Oni from the other side of the room. The Reapers didn't notice.

"It's nice to meet you too, Oni." Seras moved on and said hello to the rest of the Reapers: Megan, with her fiery red hair and fair figure, who was very cheerful with Seras; Rocky, an ironically skinny man with tight clothing and clashing combat boots; and Bobby, a little man with a quiver in his voice who didn't talk a lot. Seras gave him an especially friendly smile and handshake.

Finally, at the end of the line stood a tall, lean woman. Her black hair reached down to the small of her back, and her eyes seemed to glow more than anything else in the room with a light green. Her skin was very pale, almost pure white, save her bright red lips.

Seras looked up at the woman with an equally friendly smile and extended her hand. "Hi, I'm Seras. What's your name?" The woman looked down upon the little girl smiling at her and paused. For the tiniest of a second, the other Reapers saw her eyes glaze over in a strange way, but they couldn't imagine why.

The red on her face bent up into a smile, and the Reaper took Seras' hand. "My name is Annabelle. It's very nice to meet you Seras." Annabelle bent over a little to put her head closer to Seras' level, and her body seemed to radiate friendliness. They shook each other's hands, and Seras turned back to Reece and the throne. The Reapers watched her in a mix of astonishment and happiness.

Seras stood by Reece and looked up at him. He extended a hand to the throne beside him, Seras' throne, but she shook her head in one tiny, almost unnoticeable movement.

"I want to know how to make Games."

Reece smiled, very pleased. "In do time, Composer. But perhaps now I should take you home." A minuscule frown crossed Seras' face, but it was gone before she let it affect her.

"Okay," she acquiesced, and she took Reece's hand. "And Mr. Niky, my name is Seras."

Reece looked down at Seras with one last look of surprise. It then turned into a gentle smile, and he raised his empty hand.

"Alright then. My name is Reece."

Seras smiled back at him. "It's nice to meet you, Reece." He snapped his fingers, and they were gone.

Light suddenly poured into Seras' open eyes. She moved a little and found that she was lying in her bed. The sun was coming up outside her window and illuminating her little room. She could hear her parents up outside the door, and could smell sausage.

She sat up and looked around, confused. It couldn't have been a dream; it felt so real. But Reece wasn't in the room with her. Loneliness began to creep upon Seras, and tears began to threaten her eyes. Then something stabbed at her thigh, and she jumped a little. Curious, her hand reached into her pocket and pulled out a metal object and a slip of paper.

Seras unfolded the paper, and a key fell out. It was the key Reece used to open the purple door! Seras smiled joyously; so it hadn't been a dream. She looked at the paper.

"Only come at night, and don't let your parents find the key." She read the note over and over again, memorizing it, and then hid it and the key under her mattress. Then she went out and had breakfast with her parents, never once alluding to the adventure she'd had the previous night.

* * *

It was late Sunday night or early Monday morning, and Seras was sitting in the main room of the Reaper HQ, playing a game of cards with Oni, Megan, and Richard. She looked over the top of her cards, eyeing each of the Reapers beside her. They all exchanged secretive glances.

"Meg," Oni said dramatically. "Do you... have any threes?" He made an exaggerated question face, and Seras giggled in her seat.

Megan locked eyes with Oni, and slowly reached for one of her cards. She tugged at one, then said: "Go fish!" She and Seras laughed heartily, and Oni shook his head and pulled a card from the deck.

"Ha!" he exclaimed when he drew the card. "A three!" He plopped down the cards triumphantly and took a swig of the beer at his side.

"Alright," Seras said, scanning her cards. She studied the faces of the Reapers before her. "Richard. Do you have any kings?"

Richard sighed and put down a king of spades. "Dang Seras, how do you keep getting these?" Seras giggled and put down the cards.

They continued playing for a while, and then Seras spoke. "Oni, who are we playing against?" The Reapers stopped and looked at each other.

"What do you mean Seras?" he asked.

"In the Reaper Game. You guys keep talking about Players and Noise and stuff. Who are the Players? Who decides who becomes a Player?"

Oni paused, thinking. He put his cards down on the table and took a drink. "Well, I suppose you're gonna figure it out eventually."

"Oni..." Megan whispered, signaling him to stop.

"No Meg, she's the Composer, I think it's only fair that she knows." Megan looked from him to Seras but didn't object any further. Richard watched silently.

"Well Seras, no one really 'decides' who becomes a Player, not even the Players. It just sorts of happens, whether they want to play or not."

"You mean they're forced to play?"

"Yes, but they can 'opt out' if they choose. Although that's not... recommended." Oni seemed to be struggling with what he was telling Seras. He took another drink and continued, looking down into the depths of the bottle. "You see Seras, there's a reason we're called Reapers. The Players, are... they're kids who died." He looked up at Seras to see if she could take that piece of news. Seras looked down for a while, thinking. She did a lot of thinking now, at the Reaper HQ.

Oni continued. "That's why they're playing the Game to begin with: they died too early. And if they win, they can come back to life."

"Or become a Reaper," someone interjected. The four turned to see Reece leaning against the door. "They can either return to the land of the living or spend eternity in the Under Ground. The choice is entirely up to them."

The group became very quiet. The Reapers either looked at Seras, who was thinking or at their own feet. Reece just waited against the door patiently for his Composer to say something.

Seras looked up at the Reapers in front of her. "So you all won the Game?" They nodded slowly, unsure what Seras was thinking. "What about your mummies and daddies? Why wouldn't you go back to them? They must have been very sad."

The Reapers looked at each other with melancholy eyes. Richard spoke first.

"My parents were already gone. I lived in the streets with the rats and the lepers. I didn't have much to go back to, did I?" Seras stared at him with some confusion. Richard gave her a humorless smile. "You'll understand better when you're older."

"My dad was a drunk," Megan said. She silently raised her wine glass to the sky in sarcastic salute. "Mom was already out of the picture. Not dead, just gone. Went to Germany, I think, right before the war. Poor woman probably didn't last long, but that's what happens." She shrugged. Seras listened intently and took a moment to process the implications. She turned to Oni, who had been silent since the topic came up.

He looked away from Seras and tapped mindlessly on his bottle. "We all die eventually; I didn't see why I should bother coming back just to die again. I thought eternity sounded more interesting." He nervously chugged down the rest of his beer and got up to get another from the bar.

Seras looked down in heavy contemplation. Then she turned to Reece. "What about you?"

Reece met Seras' eyes and gave a little frown. "That was so long ago; I don't even remember. Every Player has their reasons, and you can't really question them too much since we don't fully understand their reasoning." He paused. "Well, we don't. But you can." Seras was severely confused by all the information her young brain was taking in, and it showed. Reece opened the door and signaled to her. "Come on. It's about time you learned exactly what you're going to be doing, Composer." Seras got up and followed Reece out the door. She could feel the Reaper's worried eyes following her, and she gave a little wave to them.

They walked into Seras' throne room. Between her first visit to the HQ and now Seras had figured out how the halls in this place worked: you couldn't walk through them normally because it was set up like a labyrinth; she had to know where, or to whom, she was going before she started walking.

Reece waved Seras to her throne. She didn't like the seat very much; it didn't make her feel like a queen, it was just uncomfortably big. The room wasn't very nice either, being so dark and empty. Seras much preferred to be in one of the other rooms with Oni or Richard or Annabelle, any of the Reapers really. Even Bobby and his weird obsession with dogs were preferable to this dark, dank room.

Reece leaned over the throne next to Seras. "Okay, just knock on the left arm four times." Seras obeyed and knocked on the wooden arm. Suddenly a light flashed, and a collection of figures flew at Seras. Buildings, words, so many things.

"Reece!" she yelled frightened.

"Don't worry," he said soothingly. "They're not real. Just calm your mind, tell the visions to stop."

Seras nodded and breathed in deeply, as her mother would tell her to do whenever she cried. Just breathe with your entire chest and the pain would go away. After five breathes the figures stopped flying and floated stationary in the air.

"Alright, very good," Reece chimed. "Now, what you're seeing is the building blocks of the Reaper Game. You see a list of names?"

"Yes," Seras replied.

"Focus on it." Seras pinpointed the names, and they expanded in her vision. Pictures of kids also appeared next to each name.

"Players..."

"Yes," Reece confirmed. He waited to see if Seras would react in some way to them, but he saw nothing. "These are the Players that will be in this week's Game. Now, think of London. Picture it in your mind, but don't close your eyes."

"Okay." She began to imagine Big Ben, and then Buckingham Palace and the London Bridge. The city then began to expand from those points in front of her, in the little blue lines she saw. The entire city laid itself out before her, baring it's every secret crack and corner to her. The city was much smaller than she had thought it was: she was surprised any criminal could hide in such a small place, let alone the gang her father was after. Perhaps she could find them for him with this map...

"Seras, do you have it?"

"Yes," Seras said.

"Very good. This map and the list of Players are the bases of developing a Game. Be sure you know them."

"Okay."

"Now, all that's left for you to do is come up with the missions and the rules. One mission per day." Reece looked intently on Seras, watching her. What would she do now?

"Okay," Seras said simply, and then fell into silence. An hour passed by, then another hour, then another, and still Seras sat in that throne staring into her personal vision with Reece watching her.

"I'm done."

Reece flinched with a start. "Done? So soon?"

"Yes. One mission a day, right?"

"Well yes," Reece stammered, "but it's your first game, and it normally takes much longer the first time."

"I need to go home," Seras stated bluntly. "What do I do with this?"

"Just knock on the arm again." Seras knocked, and the vision disappeared. She got up and quickly walked to the door outside, slipping in her key, and then was gone. Reece watched where she'd gone in such haste, perplexed. He took out a cell phone, one that hadn't been invented yet, and pressed a couple of buttons before settling on an image. He read a few lines and then sighed.

"This is why little girls don't work as Composers." He put the cell back in his pocket and walked out of the room.

The next night when Seras returned to the Reaper HQ, Reece was waiting for her.

"Evening Seras," he said, holding his phone between his crossed arms. Seras wouldn't look him in the eye when she closed the door.

"Hi Reece..." she mumbled trying to speed past him. Before she could cross him, his hand stretched out before her.

"Don't you want to know how the first day of your first game went?" he asked. Seras looked down at her toes.

"I know how it went," she said, then tried to get past Reece again to no avail.

"Indeed, you do," Reece said, sternness entering his tone. He looked at the screen of his phone and read from it. "No Player erasals, no time limit, no Noise battles. Their mission: pick a white flower." He looked down at her, and she turned her head away. "Now we both know that this isn't the best you could come up with. This isn't even a real Game! Do you know how disappointed the Reapers were when they got their reports saying that they weren't allowed to interact with the Game? Do you know how disappointed they are in you?"

Seras fidgeted in her place, looking in every direction except at Reece. He sighed and knelt down. "Seras, what were you thinking? You made an entire week that was impossible to lose."

Their eyes finally met, and Reece was astounded to see defiance in Seras' eyes rather than guilt. "Exactly." Reece was taken aback: his mind went into a whirl. Suddenly Seras stamped her feet and yelled at the Producer.

"They're kids! Some of them are no older than me! And you want them to go fighting monsters, running all over the city into who-knows-what? Wait no, I know what! I know exactly what they're up against, and I know they don't deserve it! I was watching their short, short lives while you thought I was making this cruel Game. Most of them have friends and family, good ones! And only one of the Players gets to go back to his family, his life while the others just stay dead and their mummies and daddies get to cry over them? That's not fair! Why can't we just have one week where no kids have to die, huh? Why not?!" And with that Seras pushed past Reece and ran down the hall into the labyrinth of the HQ. Reece knelt there, stunned frozen by Seras' words.

After a while, Reece regained his senses and went to find Seras. He found her sitting against a wall in the labyrinth, on the verge of tears. When she saw him, she pulled her knees up and hid her face from him.

For a minute Reece stood there, watching Seras. He sat down against the wall next to her and gathered his thoughts. He spoke very gently to her.

"Seras, you can't have an easy Reaper Game. That's not the way it works." She pulled her head further down into her knees and covered her ears with her elbows. "Look," he said, "do you think I like how many children die in a week? Nobody does Seras."

A muffled sound came from Seras' legs. "Then why do you let them?"

Reece was silent for a moment. "You know Seras, you're not the first Composer to try this. Many years ago, too many for my old mind to count, another Composer tried to do the same thing. He made the easiest games you could think of, games that make picking flowers seem laborious. Do you know what happened?"

Seras peeked out of her ball. "What?"

"He was fired. He could never be Composer again. But that's not the important part. The important part is that none of the Players came back to life. They all died."

Seras gasped. "Why?"

"They didn't earn their life."

"Well, why should someone have to earn their life? Isn't it supposed to be a gift?"

To Seras' surprise, Reece began to chuckle. "That depends on who you ask. Do you think Richard thought his life was a gift when he was suffering in the trenches all those centuries ago?"

"No..."

"And yet he fought in his Reaper Game, and he won. Why do you think that is?" Seras was silent. "Because in the Reaper Game, you don't fight for the right to survive. You fight for the right to LIVE, to truly live. And do you want to know something Seras?" She looked at Reece intently. "To live takes a fight. Every day people with beating and silent hearts are fighting for the right to live, fully and completely. That's what the Reaper Game represents. If the Game is too easy, then what's the point of the prize? If you don't put effort into it, you can't truly live. You simply survive, and survival is joyless."

Seras was silent, but Reece could tell that she was thinking on his words. He picked himself up and looked down the hallway. "You probably don't understand a lot of what I just said, but you will one day. In the meantime, I'll leave you to decide on what you do next." And with that Reece walked away, leaving Seras sitting in the hallway.

Later that night Reece went looking for Seras again. He found her in the throne room, staring blankly into something. She didn't notice him, so he smoothly showed himself back out with a grin. He checked his phone and was satisfied.

That week a boy named Gerald Larson won the Reaper Game. He was twelve years old and decided to return to his life. The day he came back he hugged his mother so tightly that she got bruises. And all the while, the Composer of London watched him and smiled. Now he could live.

* * *

Four Reaper Games passed each one with increasing success. On the second Game, Seras took up a new style of Game: Team Games. Each Player was partnered with another, and suddenly not only were twice as many Players winning, but real friendships began to sprout from the Games.

The Reapers were also pleased with the new games, giving them more things to do. Seras offered them more freedom than Ol' Georgie had before her, and they soaked up as much of it as they could. They still weren't permitted to attack directly Players, but they could command their own personal Noise to do their bidding, something they were surprised no one had thought of before. Now Oni didn't have to get constantly up to get his drinks; his Tamed Noise did it for him.

It was the middle of the week, and Seras sat upon her throne. She found herself doing this more and more now, to watch the Games without being interrupted by daily life. She was beginning to discover that she could see other things too; the things that the Real Ground did outside of the Reaper Games. She could see everything within the city if she concentrated, and there were many interesting things for her to see. She could even watch her father working. He spent less and less time at home now because of his undercover work, but Seras was content being able to keep an eye on him. Her mother was considerably more worried all the time, though, and it made Seras sad knowing that she couldn't offer the same comfort to her mother that she had.

Seras raised her glass of juice up to her lips, but nothing flowed into her mouth. She looked into it: empty. She frowned and began to get up to get more when Bobby walked in. His wolf Noise was panting beside him.

"Ah, Bobby!" Seras cried. Bobby stopped and cringed a little. He seemed uncomfortable. Then again, he was always that way around everyone. "Could you get me some more juice please?"

Bobby hesitated, but after a while, he mumbled that he would. Seras thanked him, and he walked out. Only then did she begin to wonder why he came to her in the first place. She pushed the thought aside and picked up her Rainbow Dash plushie.

Bobby shuffled quickly to the bar of the HQ and opened the mini fridge. There was no juice in it.

"Looking for this?" He turned to see Annabelle holding up a carton of juice. Bobby nodded quickly and took it from her. He poured out the juice and shuffled back to Seras' throne room. Behind him, Annabelle gave a little smile and rejoined the other Reapers at the table.

"Thank you, Bobby," Seras said when he returned with the juice. The Reaper mumbled a bit and hurried back out of the room. She took a sip of the drink while watching a group of runaways spray-painting a wall. She didn't notice until she had already swallowed the liquid, but Seras realized that what she was drinking was not juice.

Deeper in the Reaper HQ, down in places that the Reapers couldn't get to, Reece sat in his study working diligently on something new. He was still missing a few critical pieces to complete his project, but he didn't even really know what it was those pieces were. That's the problem with doing this job, Reece thought. No one teaches you how to do this stuff. I have to figure out new ways to do something if I want to make anything useful.

Suddenly Reece felt something crack in his head: it was a pain, not a horrible pain, but it was intrusive. He felt as though his mind was being split in two.

"Seras!" Reece took off running, forgetting the incomplete collection of materials on his desk. Fear suddenly overtook him, a fear that he hadn't felt for nearly a millennia. He burst into the throne room and ran to Seras' body. She was thrashing violently on the ground, and foam poured out of her mouth. Her eyes looked dead.

Reece instantly went into action: he placed his hand on Seras and held her down, focusing his power. Soon she began to stop thrashing and then became deathly still. Reece pulled out his phone with one hand, making sure to keep his other hand firmly on Seras to keep her still. He pressed a button and spoke into it.

"Malcolm, come to the throne room immediately. Don't tell the others where you're going."

"Why?" Oni's voice buzzed out of the phone. "What happened?"

"Just get up here now!" Reece yelled, a quiver in his voice. He hung up and put his hand back onto Seras. In seconds, Oni was coming through the doors. A gasp escaped his lips, and he froze when he saw Seras lying stiff on the ground with Reece kneeling beside her.

Reece yelled to him when he heard the door close. "Come over here, quickly!" Oni obeyed and ran to his side.

"What happened?" he asked, hesitating over Seras' body. Oni knew she was still alive; he could hear her heartbeat faintly, but it was slowing at an alarming pace.

"I don't know," Reece said. "Quickly, get this foam out of her mouth before she suffocates." Oni nodded and stooped down to Seras, spooning the foam from her with his hand.

"Okay," Oni said, wiping the saliva on his coat. "What now?"

He turned to Reece, but what he saw was not the Producer he knew. Tears were welling up in Reece's eyes, and he was trembling badly. He spoke with a quickly degenerating quiver.

"I... I don't know," he muttered. "I can't save her; I don't know what caused this. I DON'T KNOW!" He cowered over Seras, on the verge of weeping. He kept whispering something over and over again.

"I failed I failed I failed. I failed I failed I failed..." Oni watched him and Seras with great sadness. He felt as though he could cry too. His hand brushed a few strands of hair from Seras' face. Then he heard Reece say something else.

"The Higher Ups are going to be so disappointed..."

*SMACK!*

Reece fell on his back and put his hand to his throbbing cheek. Oni was standing over him, between Reece and Seras. Fury burned in his expression and littered his shouts.

"You're worried about what your bosses are going to think?" he yelled at the Producer. "A sweet, innocent little girl that looked up to us, looked up to YOU, is dying and you're worried about being scolded by the Higher Ups?! What the fuck is your problem?!"

There was a burst of energy, and Reece stood in front of Oni. The two stared angrily into each other. Reece's power far surpassed Oni's, and he knew this, but still he stared enraged at the Producer.

Then Reece heard something banging against the floor, and he looked past Oni to see Seras thrashing again. At that moment Seras was no longer Seras: she was another little girl, with waving brunette hair in a little white dress. Reece saw two tiny hands holding the girl through a veil of water, and the cries of a boy somewhere in the distance. He then saw the little brunette girl smile, and her bloody hand came up and stroked Reece's cheek until the hand fell and the girl's eyes glazed over.

Suddenly Reece was back in the throne room, and he saw Seras again. He could feel the Reaper breathing into his face, but he pushed past him and to Seras. Gently he picked her up, and she stopped thrashing. With a snap of his fingers, a hole opened up in the wall behind the throne, and he walked to it.

"We'll discuss the consequences of your treachery later," Reece said, and he stepped through the hole. It closed behind him.

Oni watched him go with Seras, unsure what to think. The Producer had just spaced out in front of him and then took Seras to who-knows-where. He frowned but then noticed the orange cup that was spilled over on the side of Seras' throne. Oni picked it off the ground and took a sniff.

He froze in wide-eyed discovery. Poison, he realized. Someone did this to her.

Reece was surrounded by a thick white fog, in the middle of nowhere. He looked around, confused. This wasn't where he was trying to go.

 _"Reece Nayake,"_  voices boomed from the sky.  _"You are aware that humans are not permitted to enter our ground, even if they are a composer. What is your purpose?"_

So they stopped me, Reece realized. Of course, they did.

"Seras is dying," Reece cried to the invisible watchers. "And I don't have the power to save her! Please, you must help her!"

_"You are the girl's protector," the voices answered. "It is your responsibility to keep her alive, not ours. She is not our concern."_

Reece grits his teeth. "Please, I am begging you. She is a good Composer, you yourselves chose her! Surely you must have had some reason to do so; you wouldn't simply turn your backs on her so easily!"

_"Silence producer!" The fog around Reece shook from the voices. "The composer is your charge; that is the way it has always been! Do not come to us with your failures! If this girl is too weak to protect herself from attack, than she clearly is not truly worthy to guide the dead!"_

A new rage rose within Reece. His grip tightened on the limp Seras, and his body burned with power. "Do not speak as if this pain was caused by Seras! She wanted none of this! Now you WILL save her, or I swear by YOUR gods that you will regret not doing so!"

_"Impudent boy!" The sky burst open with energy, and seven winged forms of power descended to Reece. They circled him, and horrible pressure beat down on his back, sending Reece to his knees. "You dare threaten us as if we were some lowly humans? You have no power without our blessing, and yet here you stand crying up to us like a babe over a lost toy!"_

Reece cringed under the enormous weight of the being's power. He looked down at Seras in his arms. She was stirring now, but with great pain. It was like she could feel the powers around her bearing down upon her little heart, condemning her. Reece gritted his teeth and forced his own power upwards. Two great white wings slowly rose from his back, and with a cry of pain, Reece covered Seras from the power raining upon her with them.

The beings around them turned their heads simultaneously at this.

_"Why do you expend your energy on this little girl? You do not know her, and she is already on the verge of death. What is the point?" Reece did not look up at them. He couldn't move his body now, under the pressure._

Then Reece felt the power lessen itself from his back. The weight left, and Reece could move once again. In his arms, Seras was calm once again.

_"Very well," the powers said. "We shall heal your composer." Reece looked up at them, speechless. Suddenly Seras disappeared from his arms and floated up into the air in the center of the powers. "But at a price."_

"What..." Reece started, suddenly made aware of a great uneasiness in his stomach. "Wait, what kind of price?" Before the beings could answer, Reece saw something growing behind Seras. Two wings, small angel wings, sprouted from her back. The right wing was a pure white, _"Not only will your girl be healed, but we shall grant her two extra gifts. The first comes in the form of the white Valkyrie wing, which shall bring her victory in battle like the winged warriors of old. The second comes in the form of the black Angel wing, which shall protect her from the unholy monsters of the world. But in return, she must bear the judgment of all souls going to Heaven or Hell, whether they be adult or child. So we have decreed it, so it shall be forever hereafter.""because you believe her to be so worthy to guide the dead, for the time she is immortal, she must not only compose the souls of children in your Reaper Game but must also judge the souls of every adult after death in all of London at the end of each_   _week"._ Reece felt himself be blown off his feet, and he and Seras cascaded away from the seven winged powers. Then all was black.

Reece regained his senses before long. He was back in the throne room, on his knees with Seras in his arms. Oni was looking down at them, worry wrinkling his young face.

They heard a little sigh and Reece looked down. Seras' eyes opened slowly, and she yawned and looked up at him.

"Reece?" she mumbled sleepily. "What happened?" Reece looked down at her, almost shocked to see her moving. Then he started to laugh joyously like he was the happiest man in the world. And during that one second of eternity, he was. He hugged Seras close to his laughing, weeping face.

"Nothing you should worry about, Seras! I'm just happy you're alright!" Seras squirmed in his choking embrace.

"Reece, you're hurting me!" He apologized and let her go. Reece calmed himself, and the two smiled at one another.

Then Seras turned around. Her Rainbow Dash doll was lying on the ground by her throne, soaked in her juice. She reached for it, but Oni grabbed her arm gently and shook his head.

"I don't think you want that anymore."

Seras looked from Oni to the doll then back to Oni in confusion. "Why not?"

"Just trust me," Oni said, offering a consoling smile. "It's not good for you."

* * *

"Reece, what is it?" Seras sat on her throne, and Reece stood before her. His eyes were cast to the side, away from her. The Producer had been standing there in front of her for minutes now and hadn't said a word. It was Sunday night, and the winner of that week's Reaper Game had already been resurrected. Midnight was nearing.

Reece hesitated. "Seras... I need to tell you something."

"Okay," Seras responded, unphased.

Reece looked down, collecting his words. "There's another job I'm afraid you have to do."

"Oh? What's that?" Reece took a deep breathe. Here it goes...

"You have to judge the dead souls of adults in London, tonight. I'm not sure when, but they'll come to you soon." Reece looked up at Seras. She was silent, looking straight through him.

"Why now?" she asked suddenly after a minute of quiet. "Why haven't I been doing this from the start?"

Reece looked back down. Seras didn't remember anything of when they were between here and the Higher Plane, or what They had said. She didn't even remember being poisoned, or who had given her the juice. If Reece told her about the Higher Ups, he'd have to tell her what happens. But he couldn't take making her upset, not yet. She'd already been through enough. In the future, he'd have to, but for now, it was in Seras' best interest to not be worried by the knowledge.

"The Higher Ups only recently decided to give Composers the extra duty," Reece said, not technically lying. Just then Reece heard four sharp knocks, and he looked up at Seras to see her staring off.

"They're already here," Seras said. Her eyes scanned space invisible to Reece. "There aren't a lot of old people..." Reece stepped back in astonishment. Already? he thought.

Suddenly Reece was faced with the prospect of not knowing what to do. There Seras was, doing something no other human in all existence had ever done, and he had no way of helping her.

"Hehehe," Seras giggled suddenly. "I like him. He's nice."Uh, Seras!" Reece said quickly. "Don't be too rash with your judgments on people. I mean, this is their afterlife, after all, you should be careful where you put them..."

"I know Reece," Seras said. She smiled, looking down at him through her vision. "It's my job. I can do it."

"Well, but Seras, there are things that adults do that you probably don't fully understand yet. I mean..."

"Reece," Seras cut him off. "Why are you standing down there? You should be up here with me. This could take a while, and I don't want to be lonely." Reece started, rendered speechless. Then he closed his eyes and smiled acceptingly. If there's any child who can take the sins of humanity, it's her. Reece thought. I suppose I'll just have to trust in her judgment.

He walked up to the throne and placed his hand on its back. "Of course Seras. I won't leave any time soon."

"Thank you." Seras smiled, and the two were there in silence until the break of dawn. Seras saw many lives in that single night, and she judged many souls. She saw the tragedies and joys of every man and woman who had passed away that week. She witnessed murders, suicides, family dramas, and many of the other sins of the world. And though Seras cried more often than not, and even though at times she could feel the hopelessness of the dead souls, she realized something that many of those souls didn't in their many years of life: not a single life, not one in all of London at least, was without joy. Seras discovered good moments and people where the souls had found only depression. And she wondered why those adults were so blind, so unwilling to fight for their lives. The children of the Reaper Games could do it; they did so daily. But why didn't these adults?

At the very end of it all, when Seras had judged the last soul, she posed these questions to Reece. He looked down sadly at the little girl, who knew so much and understood so much, yet was still ignorant of more still.

"Well Seras, some people just aren't strong enough to fight. They try for much of their lives, but after a while, if someone takes just too much, they have to break. Everyone has their breaking point; I'm afraid..." He was silent for a moment. "Even children can be broken. And when someone is broken, it could take years or even lifetimes to fix themselves. Some never do."

The two stayed quiet for a while, contemplating these things. Seras couldn't help but be reminded of the Reapers, Richard and Megan and everyone. She wondered if maybe they had been broken, or if they were stronger than the other souls who wouldn't become Reapers. But if they didn't return to the Real Ground, could they really be stronger than those who do? Seras' brain hurt from all the thinking children weren't even supposed to comprehend.

"So," Reece said, putting on a more cheerful face. "Do you think you put all the souls in the right places?"

"Yes, I sent them where they deserved." Seras smiled a little, then yawned. Her time in the HQ may be able to ward off her exhaustion, but not forever.

Reece chuckled. "I think you should go home. Get some rest."

"Okay," Seras yawned. She waddled sleepily to the door and pulled out her key. "Good night Reece."

"Good night Seras."

"And thank you." Reece paused. Thank you for what? Seras opened the door and disappeared. Reece stood in the dark throne room, wondering. She must have meant for staying by her while she judged souls. Of course, that was it

* * *

Seras slipped her key into the door of her bedroom and opened it into the Reaper HQ. Standing in front of her were all six Reapers and Reece, holding up a big pink cake with seven candles on it.

"Happy Birthday Seras!" they cried, and the biggest smile exploded onto Seras' face. She ran in and slammed her door shut, laughing jubilantly.

That night was by far the single greatest night Seras spent at the Reaper HQ: for the first time since her first night as a Composer, all the Reapers as well as Reece were in the same room together with Seras, no missions, no distractions. Just the whole group having a big party, all for Seras.

The cake was magnificent: it was filled in the center with a gooey strawberry jelly, and the vanilla breading was generously smothered with pink frosting and coated in little candies. Reece said that he had made it personally, and Seras gave him a giant hug. She would repeat the action once again once she opened her presents.

Two in particular stood out: the first was a new My Little Pony doll, from Megan and Reece.

"I bought the actual doll," Megan said, smiling as Seras bounced up and down in excitement over the Fluttershy plushie. "But wait until Reece tells you what he added." Seras looked over at Reece, still bouncing with pleasure.

He smiled and nodded at the toy. "Scratch below her chin." Seras did as he said, and then jumped back in sheer amazement: before her very eyes the doll neighed and came to life, growing three times its original size and flying around the room.

"It's alive?!" Seras cried out.

"And you can ride it too," Reece added. The animate doll landed by Seras, and no power in the UG could stop her from scrambling on top of its back and taking off. She flew around the room on Fluttershy's back, laughing with great joy. She hugged the doll's neck and Fluttershy's stitching formed into a warm smile. The two landed only when Reece said that there was still a gift for Seras to open.

"Why wouldn't you save the best for last?" Seras asked, still hugging the doll.

"Oh believe me, I did." Reece handed Seras a tiny box, barely bigger than her hand. She looked down at the little present, sure that it couldn't be nearly as great as her personal Fluttershy.

Seras tore the wrapping paper off and pulled open the lid. Inside was a little pendant: it was a solid metal disk, and welded onto it were two curving wings, one white and one black. They folded into a little circle on the golden disk, and it shined with an unearthly light.

"It's pretty..." Seras admired the trinket. She touched it ever so gently, as if it would fall apart if she wasn't careful.

"Put it on," Reece said. Seras slowly pulled the silver chain out from the box, and held the pendant before her. She lowered it onto her neck, still moving cautiously like it was made of the thinnest glass. Once it touched her skin, Seras suddenly felt a wave of power pass over her. It was sizzling, but also warm and smooth. This was the kind of power Seras believed a fairy godmother's magic would feel like, but multiplied exponentially.

"Wow..." Seras looked down at the little pendant, eyes wide in wonder.

"That necklace is filled with the power of a Composer," Reece said, feeling satisfied with her reaction. "Tap it four times and you'll be instantly connected to the Reaper Games control system. But that's not the best part." Seras looked up at him, as if to say "it gets better?"

Reece turned and pointed at a glass on the counter at the other end of the room. "Imagine that glass on the table in front of you. Really concentrate." Seras barely even had to try. She looked at the glass, and with the slightest picturing it vanished and reappeared on the table in front of her. She jumped and knocked over her Fluttershy, who whinnied in distress.

The Reapers around her chuckled, and she scowled up at them. Suddenly they were blown back by an invisible force into the walls. They hit the walls with one unisal thud, but most of them weren't hurt. They were however incredibly surprised.

A wide grin bridged Reece's face. "You'll have to learn to control that, but I promise it will come in handy should you ever need it. And don't worry, the power only works for you. Just be sure not to lose it."

Seras looked up at Reece and smiled gleefully. "I won't! Thank you Reece!" She jumped up and tackled him, actually knocking the wind out of the Producer. He laughed and bore down on her, pushing Seras to the ground, and the two started wrestling. The Reapers around them laughed, and Oni, Megan, Richard, and Annabelle joined in.

It was the best birthday Seras had ever, or would ever, have.

* * *

It was dark and cramped, and Seras could feel a cobweb against her hair. But Seras didn't care. Not now.

 

"Listen to your mum; stay in the closet. Please, don't come out no matter what." Seras' mother closed her eyes and backed out of the closet. She steeled herself for what was to come next. Her heart ached for her daughter, weeping against the wall. Perhaps she could go on. Maybe she would be lucky.

"Mummy!" Seras cried, tears flooding down her cheeks. Her body felt clammy and shaky. She didn't understand what was going on. Why was she being hid in the closet? What was so wrong? "Mummy!"

The door shut, and Seras was left in weeping silence. For a moment, everything seemed to stop. No sound came from outside the doors, and Seras waited in horrible anticipation of something she didn't know. She grasped her shirt, but there was no pendant. She had left it in her room, with her key hidden away from her parents.

*Bang* Seras jumped a little from the sound of a gunshot outside. *Bang bang bang bang bang!* She quivered as she heard laughter echoing from the room beyond the closet door. If she just stayed inside and stayed quiet, she'd be fine. She doesn't know anything's wrong; it could be nothing. But that laughter...

Seras inched the door open, just enough to peer through it. She could hear a dull, constant thudding from outside.

"Oy, piggy piggy, whazza matter?" Two unfamiliar men were standing outside. One had his back turned to Seras, and he was kicking something. What was it?... "Hahahaha! Come on mate, squeal like a pig why don't ya?"

The other man, a grey-haired man spoke to the other. "Shoulda just had him squeal before ya shot." The walls were spattered with streaks of blood, and the air stank of iron. Seras looked down, focusing on the object that the man was kicking. She choked; there her father lay, with four holes in him and bleeding profusely. His eyes were blank and stared in different directions, and his mouth hung open dumbly.

"Ah, this one's special. He's so fucking good at it! The squealing like a pig what earned him this. He stuck that badge and that snout-of-his where it didn't belong." The man gave one last big kick and then stepped away. He stamped his foot on something else, something Seras hadn't noticed: her mother, lying bloody on the floor with two holes going through her.

"You were just for fun!" the man taunted, pointing his gun in the dead woman's face.

Seras could feel every synapse in her brain go off and snap into little pieces, and her heart shriveled up and crawled into a corner of her stomach. The closet door swung open, slowly, and Seras felt her feet carrying her forward.

Mummy, she thought blankly. Her entire body felt like lead. All that she could feel was her feet moving forward. Daddy? A deep, throbbing feeling started to rise in her. It rose from her feet into her stomach, and then it pushed her heart out of its corner and filled it with rage. It overflowed with the emotion; it burned horrifically.

Her feet picked up; they picked up speed. Seras dropped her hand to the ground and grabbed the first thing they touched: a silver fork. She charged forward, blind with rage. Actually no, Seras was far from blind: suddenly she could see very clearly. She could see the blood around her; she saw with extreme clarity the corpses of her parents. But most of all, she saw the men who killed them in cold blood. Seras had seen so many men murder and maim on her throne, but never had she been so close to it. Suddenly she could feel the sheer emotion all those other souls must have felt before her, in their final moments or long before then.

Seras jumped in a single decisive movement, and she heard the grizzly squish of the fork gouging into first man's eye. He reared back with a painful scream, leaking blood and white fluid.

The other man pulled up his gun. "Big mistake!" One sharp bang and something exploded in Seras gut. She flew across the room into the wall, landing back on the floor with a dull thud and a little splash.

"My eye!" the man shrieked, pulling the fork out. It sounded like pulling a cork out of a wine bottle, but wetter. "That filthy little cunt!"

"You can bitch later. We have to get outta here."

"It hurts goddamnit!" The man looked at Seras' mother with his last eye. "Gimme a sec, you aren't the one with a fork in ya! Let me toss one in the wifey first." He bent down over her body, sweating now. His eye socket stung horribly, but he only needed the one eye to see his new prize.

"Fuck you on? She's dead," the second man said in protest, although he didn't sound at all surprised.

"Still warm, in'nit?" He tore off the mother's shirt, and her breasts flopped to the sides. "I've fucked worse."

Seras laid on the floor in silence, barely breathing. Her midsection cried in anguish, but still her heart pumped on. Her ears rang from the sound of the gunshot, and black spots danced in her vision. And yet what happened next was all too clear to her.

*Squish squish squish* Seras slowly looked up, her body barely able to maintain the strength. But still she saw what was before her. Even still, despite her weakness and her pain, she could see the atrocity.

The man grunted with each passing thrust, and the floor creaked beneath his movements. *Squish squish squish* He was smiling, that kind of smile that one does not see on the face of average civilization. He bore the face of the underground, the pleasure of Hell. *Squish squish squish* The body was limp like a puppet under him. Her dead breasts bounced up and down with the rhythm of her murderer's gyrations. *Squish squish squish* Those dead eyes just kept looking up, in an eternal state of terror. The live eye dilated in sick pleasure at the sight of his control, his power. He'd won, and he would enjoy his prize for as long as his stamina would last. And then maybe he would go again afterward. *Squish squish squish*

*Crunch*

The second man and Seras watched as the man's head fell within itself. The entire head, skull, brains, flesh, and all were pushed down into his neck by a strong, vein encrusted hand. The flesh was pushed down further and further while his vertebrae slid out of his back and folded on the hardwood floor. With a swift kick, the man flew across the room, his spine flopping through the air next to his bare dick, and he landed on the ground next to his buddy.

There above the mother's body stood Reece, his bloody hands flexing and pulsating. His teeth were bared, and Seras could hear them grinding against each other. His breathing seemed to make his entire body grow with each inhalation, and his eyes grew more and more bloodshot with each second.

"The fuck?!" The other man pulled up his gun, but it snapped apart in his hand. Reece appeared before the man, looking down on him. The man felt like a child before this awesome power. And like a child, he fell before Reece after a swift swipe of his hand, and the man's head rolled across the floor.

Reece turned back to the bloody tragedy behind him. There lay Seras, his Composer and charge, and her parents in bloody pools. Seras was watching Reece with tears spilling down her face.

He walked over to her sadly and bent down to her. He picked her up in his arms and looked down at the poor girl. Then she buried her face in his jacket and started wailing uncontrollably. All the emotion, all the rage, suddenly just dispersed from both Reece and Seras at that moment, and they just waited there, Seras crying and Reece holding her tiny body in his arms.

After a while, they had to leave. Neither Reece nor Seras cared to stay in that place of death. And yet where do they go, but just another place of death

* * *

Seras didn't leave the Reaper HQ all that week. She never so much as left the throne room. Reece stayed with her night and day, always just behind the throne. Whenever Seras would start to cry, he would hold her, and his embrace was the only thing that would calm her down. She didn't play any games with the Reapers; they didn't even come in her room. What was there to say, really?

"Reece," Seras said from her throne. Her voice was steady, yet very much empty. "The Games ended."

"Yeah," Reece responded.

"Nina and Gulliver won," Seras continued as if she didn't hear him. "I liked them."

"I liked them too."

"Maybe one day I'll meet them," Seras said. "I'll get to congratulate them on coming back to life. Then I'll introduce them to the other winners, and we'll all go out for lunch, and... and..." Seras drifted into silence.

Reece frowned. He felt like he knew what Seras was going through, how she felt. But she was a strong girl, he convinced himself, she would survive. Seras won't break, not her.

"You could meet them whenever you like, Seras." They remained silent for a while. It was during times like this that Reece realized how empty and dark the throne room really was. He wasn't sure why it was designed like this. Or why Seras never just changed it.

"Reece," Seras said, breaking the silence again. "What were your parents like?" Reece looked up at Seras. Her face was unreadable.

"I don't know," he admitted. "It's been so long; I don't really remember my parents."

"Will... will I forget my parents too?" Seras began to quiver. Reece opened his mouth, but no words would obey him. How could he answer a question like that?

"They're here," Seras said before he could think of an answer. Reece recoiled; he felt useless all of a sudden. It was like Seras was just out of his reach now. He felt like he couldn't help her anymore. Wait, Reece thought anxiously. This week's souls! Oh God no, don't be that cruel...

A little choke sounded from above Reece, and he already knew it was over. He looked up Seras' teary face, totally impotent.

"Mummy," she whimpered. "Daddy..." Seras clenched her fists tightly on the throne, and the wood creaked under her grip. She closed her weeping eyes as tightly as she could, but the tighter she closed them, the more tears escaped. She was barely holding in her whimpers as despair rode up and down her little body, raining spears upon her shriveled heart.

"Seras..." Reece said mourningly. She looked down at him. "It's okay. It'll only take a couple minutes; then it'll be over. I'm right here." Seras nodded and turned back to her vision.

"Seras..." Reece said mourningly. She looked down at him. "It's okay. It'll only take a couple minutes, and then it'll be over. I'm right here." Seras nodded and turned back to her vision.

Daddy... She picked her father's name, and the images began. They started from his earliest memories as a toddler, as nothing from his infantile years would be important for the judging process. Seras braced herself for the worst, but as she watched her father grew up, a little smile began to light her face. He was a fine, strong man in his youth. He acted boldly, standing up to the bullies that were in his school. If they picked on some kid younger than them, he would stand between them and fight off the bullies. But never once did he fight for himself. Seras was filled with a warming pride as she witnessed her father joining the force and fighting crime. She never realized just how much good he did in his life. She watched as he lifted her baby form up in his arms at the hospital, her mother smiling under a sheet of sweat from the bed. He whispered to her, and Seras nearly broke down at his words.

"Hey there, baby girl," the memory of her father said. "I'm your poppa. I won't ever let you go, got that? So don't you try and lose me, 'cause I'll just keep coming back for you."

Seras wiped her tearful eyes and silently sped through the rest of his life. She'd seen enough.

"Heaven." The image slowly vanished, and Seras felt her father's soul ascend into Heaven. His picture smiled at her, and then was gone. She sniffed and wiped her face with her hand. Beside her Reece smiled, glad that she could have some closure with her parents.

Seras selected the next person down the list: her mother.

Seras mother judgment)  
The vision began to play, and Seras watched her mother play as a toddler with other kids with a much more humorous point of view. Watching these memories, it almost felt to Seras like her parents weren't even gone: that they were still right by her side. It was comforting, seeing her parents live out the lives she hadn't known they had.

But then again, children aren't meant to know their parents lives. Because then the illusion breaks.

"Miss Victoria, what is the meaning of this?!"

Seras froze, rendered slack-jawed. Little children were crying on the ground, bruises beginning to develop. Above them, the child version of her mother stood up against the teacher that had torn her away from them. She didn't speak a word, but Seras could see in her head, feel her feelings: her mother was indignant towards the other kids, vengeful against the teacher. Seras couldn't even find her mother's reason for hitting the other kids.

The vision sped forward, and suddenly she was a teenager. It was pitch black where she was, but the sounds echoed inside the small room. Seras heard a strange moaning; it wasn't painful, or sad. It was... happy.

*Squish squish squish*

Seras tensed. That sound... that awful sound was coming from within the room. She could hear her mother calling out to someone, but Seras couldn't see his face. It was only the sound of her mother's moanings and that awful noise.

The vision sped up again, and Seras saw her mother in a white gown and veil. She and Seras' father were standing at an altar, with a crowd of people behind them. Seras' tension eased a bit. Their wedding day. She remembered this from her father's memory; it was a nice day. They had a lot of fun, laughing as they smashed cake in each other's faces. Seras could feel the happiness emanating from her mother. She was radiant in her dress, and her father looked stunningly handsome beside her. The two looked like they were made for each other.

*Squish squish squish*

Seras seized up as the scene suddenly changed, and that horrific noise started again. She was in a hotel room, in the dark. But it wasn't as dark as before; now she could see what was making the noise. And Seras didn't want to.

It looked vile, like an atrocity against nature. Seras felt her stomach flop within her, but she couldn't look away no matter how hard she wanted to. There on the bed was her mother, panting and sweating. There was a man on top of her, and they were both naked, flopping against each other. Her mother let out a gasp of exultation, and the man rolled off her.

He was not Seras' father.

Seras couldn't take it anymore. She panicked and beat on the throne's arm, and the vision disappeared. Seras curled up into a ball and held in her cries.

Reece was shocked at the sudden change in her expression. "Seras, what is it? What did you see?"

Seras looked up at him. Reece realized that she had looked at him with tears in her eyes far too much recently.

"Mummy..." she sputtered. "Mummy was bad! But... but she shouldn't go to Hell. She's my mummy! She... she..." Seras began to wail and stuffed her head back into her knees.

Reece hugged her balled-up body, stroking her back.

"Seras," he whispered. She looked over her knees at him, shaking a little less. "You have to do what your judgment says is right. I'll stand by you no  _matter_  what."

Seras slowly put her legs down. Reece wiped the tears from her face, smiling comfortingly. Seras nodded, then knocked on the throne's arm. She looked at the picture of her mother, smiling at her. Within that picture lay her soul, entrusted to her daughter's hands.

Seras steadied herself, but still she stuttered just a little.

"H... He..."

* * *

_"The child composer has completed another set of Judgments."_

_"This set had her own parents, and even still she judged them correctly and without bias. Most impressive."_

_"For a human."_

* * *

Perhaps the rain was clichéd, but Reece felt it was appropriate for the day. The sky was hidden behind thick grey clouds, and heavy rain pellets riddled the earth and its darkly dressed inhabitants at the graveyard. _  
_

Seras and Reece walked alone through the grounds, Reece carrying a black umbrella. They were surrounded by the headstones of people they didn't know. Nobody else would know who Seras' parents were, Seras thought. Just like these other headstones that she saw: these names meant nothing to her, and her parent's names would mean nothing to others. Perhaps that was a good thing.

"There they are," Reece said. A distance away, there was a gathering around two graves. Her parent's burial. Seras tugged at Reece's sleeve. He smiled sadly and shook his head.

"They don't know I came with you. You've been gone for over a week, remember? They'd think I kidnapped you. Don't worry, I'll be right here when you want to leave. Do you have your key?" Seras felt her pocket and nodded. "Good. Don't lose it, no matter what."

"I know."

"Good girl." He squeezed her shoulder. "Now go on." Reece offered her the umbrella, but Seras walked off without taking it. The rain flattened her hair and streamed down her face.

Someone Seras didn't recognize was saying something she couldn't hear over her parent's graves. But what he was saying didn't matter, because he became silent at the sight of her. The crowd became confused and uneasy, turning to see what had silenced him. Suddenly a deeper hush fell over the crowd as Seras walked slowly towards them.

"Seras?" someone said. "Seras! It's you!" A man in a police uniform pushed through the crowd and reached for her. Seras raised her hand and the officer stopped, not of his own will, but of Seras'. The group of black clothes divided as Seras made her way through, and everyone in attendance were as silent as the graves around them.

Seras reached into her coat and extracted two white daisies. She knelt before her father's grave, dropping a flower into the hole on his coffin. She wanted him to have it, not his headstone. Seras smiled a little at the wooden box, and mouthed a few words of goodbye to her father inside it.

Then she moved over to her mother's grave. Somehow the hole looked ever so deeper than the one Seras' father inhabited. She knelt before this one too, dropping the flower down onto her coffin like before. She mouthed a few words, but did not smile.

Before long the graves were filled and the attendants left. Seras did not leave with Reece, but with the cop that had tried to reach her before. He worked with Seras' father, he told her, and that he had been helping with the search for Seras. She apologized for being gone, but wouldn't say where she was during the time.

Reece did not follow her, nor did he stay in the graveyard. He returned to the Reaper UG, with a growing sadness deep within his heart.

His phone beeped, and on it was a message that Reece didn't have to read. He already knew what was going to be on it. Back in his room, among a hundred unfinished projects, Reece silently wept. He wept for Seras, his Composer, his charge. And his love.

_"Do not interfere with the Composer's Real Ground life."_

* * *

Rhythm began to beat from Seras' hands, swishing from side to side. She could hear the music begin to pour from her mind. Her smile grew, and Seras closed her eyes and let herself be absorbed in the music. _  
_

A voice, her voice, began to sing from some distant place. "The first Alice was a wrathful woman of the spade. And righteously she held a sharpened blade within her hand. Never hesitating to slay all within her way. Creating paths of blood that followed her through Wonderland."

There was a knocking from behind her, and suddenly it all ended. The music stopped, and Seras fell back into silence. The beds put themselves back, and her pendant dimmed back into a cool metal. Seras strolled lazily to her bed and threw herself on it, absent-mindedly opening the window shades.

There was a sharp series of clicks and the door swung open.

"Isn't it 'un-Christian' to barge into someone's room without permission?" Seras said flatly from her bed. She didn't bother looking up at whoever came in. It really didn't matter to her.

"Isn't it also un-Christian to beat someone with a rock?"

"I've never claimed to be a Christian," Seras remarked.

"Neither have I. Shall we call it a draw then?" A woman walked into Seras' vision. She was not a nun, as evidenced by her lack of black and white drapes that were used as clothing. Seras recognized her as one of her teachers, one of the volunteers for the orphanage. She had long, wavy brown hair that extended past her shoulders. She wore a simple button-up collared shirt and trousers, with loopy gold earrings that could blind someone if they reflected light at the right angle. She also had an American accent, which made it sometimes hard for the children to understand her.

"Hello, Donna," Seras said. The teacher frowned at her.

"It's Mrs. Cordliph." she corrected.

"Uh-huh." Seras looked up with disinterest at her teacher. Mrs. Cordliph met her gaze, trying to wait her out.

"So what do you want?" Seras asked before long. Donna raised an eyebrow.

"Why? Do you have something that I would want?"

"I don't know; you want a Fluttershy? It won't fly for you, but it's still cuddly."

Donna smirked, but Seras didn't act like it was meant to be amusing. She just kept looking up at the bottom of the bunk above her. The teacher sat down on the opposite bed, brushing off her pant legs habitually.

"No, you can keep your doll. I was just walking down the hall, and I heard you singing." Seras turned at this, her eyes growing a little wider. "There aren't a lot of children that sing when they're supposed to be being punished. And such a... peculiar song as well. Where did you learn it?"

Seras looked down for a moment as if considering whether or not to tell even Donna. "I just made it up."

"Do you read much Lewis Carroll?"

"Hm?" Seras looked at her questioningly.

"Lewis Carroll," Donna said. "He wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. That is what your song was about, right?"

Seras took a second to think about this. Just then she remembered that one of her first books was actually Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Back then it seemed like a big book. Now Seras could read through it twice in a day if she chose. "Yes," she said. "I used to read that a lot." She giggled a little at the memory. "The Cheshire Cat was my favorite character besides Alice: he was the only one who ever tried to help her. But she didn't always get what he said."

Donna smiled back at Seras. "Yeah, the things he said were sometimes as cryptic as Wonderland itself. Say," she said, coming up with something. "Do you remember the riddle that the Mad Hatter made up for Alice?"

Seras thought for a while, trying to remember. "What's the difference between a raven and a writing desk?"

"Close. It's 'why is a raven like a writing desk.' Do you know the answer?" Seras shook her head. "Very few people come up with answers, and even less have good ones. This is the answer I like the most, though: a raven eats worms, and a desk is worm-eaten." Seras sat up now, considering the answer.

"I like that too." she said.

"Yeah," Donna grinned. "I like that answer because it acts as a sort of microcosm for Wonderland." Seras stared at her blankly. "Oh, sorry, you don't know that word. It's like... do you know what a metaphor is? No? Hmm... You know globes, right? Well, globes are microcosms of the Earth: small things that represent bigger things. And just like a globe, this answer to the riddle is a 'microcosm' to Wonderland, because in Wonderland the entire world runs on an eat-or-be-eaten society. It's survival of the fittest; everyone's out for them and their own. Seras..." She leaned forward and touched Seras' hand. "The orphanage is NOT Wonderland. Here, it's not you eat everyone, or they'll eat you. Here, if you eat someone, then you will be eaten." She gripped Seras' hand. "Do you understand?"

Seras looked down at the teacher's hand on her own. Her face suddenly became stoney again, and her eyes narrowed.

"Uh-huh."

Donna frowned, but released Seras' hand and stood up. She stopped on her way out the door.

"I won't tell the nuns or the Headmaster about your little song. Right now they would probably just use it as an excuse to kick you out." She shut the door, and there was no sound of the door being locked. Seras glared at the spot Donna had been.

At least, she'll admit that they want me gone.

* * *

Night had fallen, and all the children snored soundly in their bunks. All, that is, except Seras under her covers.

She peeked out, listening to the various snores and other sounds of sleep. Seras could hear all of them individually, despite how loud some of them were, she knew what sounds there were when they were all asleep. And at that moment, they were all out like lights.

Seras cautiously slipped her blanket off and let her feet inch to the ground. She reached under her pillow and grabbed her key, then tip-toed to the door. She pushed the key into the doorknob and turned it gently until eventually the door gave way.

The Reaper HQ's entrance stood out garishly compared to the hallway of the orphanage, with its bright lights and yellowish-white paint. Seras had to close the door behind her quickly to make sure that she didn't wake any of the kids up behind her and get busted.

But really, Seras would've gone through quickly even if there were no sleeping kids behind her. She wanted to go back.

The first place she always went to was the bar. And tonight, just like any other night, there was Oni chugging down a new bottle of whatever. He looked thoroughly drunk, which was quite the spectacle considering his tolerance level.

"H-hic-hey Sorry! Whazzup? Want a drink?" Oni stumbled a bit, raising his bottle. Seras giggled.

"No thanks. Still seven."

"Maaaaan," Oni sighed, plopping the bottle back on the bar. "I'm... four hundred and seventy-two, maybe, and never once have I had a year longer than the time it's gonna take for you to be 'of age.'" He made air quotes when he said this.

"That's because it's going to take longer than a year, Oni," Seras said, laughing. Oni looked at his hand and started counting fingers, with a drunken look of deep thought.

"Oh yeah. You're right, you're right." He took another swig from the bottle and didn't put it down until he realized that he was drinking air. "Oh sh-hic-it, when'd that happen?" He tossed the bottle across the room, smashing it against the wall. Seras didn't cringe at the sound; that's what Oni did with empty bottles. An arm extended from him and snatched another bottle from behind the counter, handing it to Oni, then disappeared. He uncorked the bottle and started chugging.

"So," Seras said, tapping her foot against the floor. "Where's everyone else?"

Oni spun his head back as if he had forgotten Seras was there. "Welp, Mags and I-heard are out somewhere, probably banging." He giggled to himself. Seras didn't know what that meant yet, although she wouldn't have wanted to. "Rocky and Bobby are probably doing boring stuff, knowing them. And Anny is... um... is..."

"Over here, you drunken idiot." Seras and Oni turned to see Annabelle walking through the door. "And I don't think Megan and Richard would much appreciate you spreading rumors about them. And you're only eighty-sixed, I don't know where you got four hundred and seventy-two."

Oni burped with discontent. "Bah, why you gotta ruin my fun Anny? And how do you know how old I am, hunh?"

"We have files, idiot, and they're public files."

"Hey," Seras said loudly. The two turned to her. "Stop calling Oni an idiot." She pointed to him. "Apologize."

Annabelle blinked, and malcontent flashed across her face. She turned to Oni and bowed sarcastically. "I'm sorry."

Seras looked at her, unconvinced, but Oni waved it off. "Bah, I know you don't mean -hic- nothin'. Care for a drink?"

"I'll pass," she said, scrutinizing him like she wasn't used to this. "I'm just looking for something."

"Something like what?"

"You'd know if you found it, even in your drunken state."

"H-hic-hey, I'm not American." Seras and Oni laughed as Annabelle planted her head in her palm and sighed.

"You're useless. I'll find it myself." She turned around and left the room, although Seras thought she saw her eyes flash towards her as she walked. She shrugged it off.

"More of a stick in the mud now than that girl used to be," Oni said, taking another swig. "Granted she-hic-she was never that fun. Always had a weird sense of humor, and that's me talking! But she was alright, up 'till recently. A lot looser before, that's for sure."

"I swear to God Oni, I'll hang you by your intestines!" Annabelle screamed through the walls.

"Aren't you supposed to be looking for something?" he yelled back. He waved his hand and took another drink. "But anyway, we had fun. Good games, good drinks, good jokes, good nights."

"You two didn't actually... you know..." Seras was beginning to turn green. She tried not to think about it, but it kept penetrating her thoughts.

"Hmm? Oh no, I was just having fun with her! Nah, Reapers can't do that. We aren't alive, how could we get a good blood flow down there?" Seras let out a little sigh of relief.

Time passed in relative silence. Seras made a few observations of the day's Reaper Game, and Oni went through another bottle.

"Oni?" Seras said suddenly. His eyes shot open. He had nearly passed out. "Why do you drink so much?"

"Because Sery, even after I die, there are parts of me that keep trooping on. Memories that I don't want. And this magical elixir lets me get rid of those pesky memories." He took another stiff drink. "See? There goes my eleventh birthday. Shitty cake, no presents, my pop was still out... bugger, not quite gone yet." He took another drink.

"How did you die?"

Oni looked over at the girl. "Why are you asking these questions all of a sudden?"

She looked down and shrugged. "I just want to know."

"Well," he said, leaning against the bar. "I got killed by a 'spirit.'"

Confusion wrinkled Seras' face. "A spirit?"

"Yep. Most deadly spirit in the world!" He reached out and waved his bottle in the air, making ghost noises. "What can I say, it's a cruel mistress."

"But... even as a kid?"

"Especially as a kid!" Oni said, jumping up. "You ever heard the phrase 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger?' Well, that's the maxim I lived on! And pretty soon, you find out that everything makes you stronger. Grow up in a shack? Made me stronger. Dad beat mum to death and get sent to jail? That made me stronger too. Live with my strict-arse grandpappy? I was getting beefed up! Drink, smoke, and chew my way through the world? Girl, I was so strong that I could take on the whole British empire! But, turns out what makes you stronger also puts you in the ground at the age of thirteen. Woops." He shrugged. "Shit happens I guess. I snuck a peek at my funeral when I became a Reaper. It was a touching ceremony: my grandpa dug a hole, threw me in it, and walked away. It was truly heartfelt.

"Anyway, I guess when I died I realized that I didn't want to go back. But I also wasn't ready to die. I mean, what had I done with my life, really? I cried and drank and smoked, didn't go to school, didn't contribute to any society, except maybe the drug dealer society, and then I just dropped dead. No, I wanted to do something! I wanted to make some kind of difference. So, I fought my way through the Reaper Games and made something of my afterlife! And the great thing is, I didn't have to give up the drinking!" He chugged down the rest of the bottle and threw it across the room. Then he let out a deep yawn.

"I'm gonna go take a nap," Oni said, patting Seras on the shoulder. "Help yourself to the bar."

Seras passed on the offer

"Hey, Reece." Reece spun around from his work bench. Seras didn't come to his room very often.

"Hey, Seras." He smiled and hugged her. She hugged him back tightly.

"What are you working on?" She walked over to his desk and examined the various bits of machinery.

"I don't know," he said. "I figured that I'd think of something to use it for while I was making it. Until then let's call it a 'doohickey.'" Seras giggled, repeating the jibberish. Reece stood by her and examined the pieces that would eventually become something. Silence shrouded the room as the two looked over the desk, each thinking out their own puzzles.

"Reece, have you ever eaten someone?"

He jumped back. "What?!"

"One of my teachers talked about it to me. She said that the orphanage wasn't an "eat or be eaten" place. But I never ate anybody." Reece thought for a moment until he understood what Seras was talking about. He sighed.

"What did you do Seras?" Seras looked down, tapping her foot on the ground and waving her hips.

"Nothing..."

"Don't lie to me Seras," Reece said sternly. She cringed under his disapproval.

"I hit a boy with a rock..." she mumbled.

"Why?" Reece was staring intently as Seras now.

"He took my toy, and when I tried to get it back he knocked me down and spit in my hair! And then he grabbed my skirt, and he started ripping it!" Sobs were beginning to spurt from Seras as she spoke. "And he didn't even get in trouble! All I did was hit him with a rock! I could've killed him if I chose to!"

"Don't you say that," Reece said, kneeling down and looking intently at her. "Don't you ever even think of killing someone over something so small!"

"Small?" Seras objected. "But..."

"Were you in danger?"

"... No."

"Did you enact justice?"

"... Yeah. The rock hit him pretty hard."

"Then why would you choose to kill him?" Seras was quiet, unsure how to argue with Reece. It still didn't feel right to her.

"Seras, you showed restraint. That's a good thing, whether the nuns or whoever understands that or not. If you'd used all your power against that one boy, not only would you be in a world more trouble, but you would have 'eaten' him.

"In a world where it's 'eat or be eaten,' everyone is selfish and will prey upon those weaker than them. And your teacher is wrong: that's exactly what the orphanage is. But that's a bad thing."

"Really?"

"Yes. In a world like that, people die for no reason, and every person is no better than an animal. That's the system this boy was using, and that's the system your Headmaster uses just as well. But," Reece added, smiling mischievously, "you have the power to make the orphanage a place BETTER than that. A place of justice, true justice."

Seras looked up, wide-eyed in confusion. "How."

"Rather than fighting the weak that pick on you, defend the weak that are being abused themselves. And always take responsibility for your actions, because they are not wrong. Fight for others rather than yourself."

"But," Seras stammered, "none of the other kids like me anyway."

"And what have you done to them, except avoid and scare them?"

She was silent. It all made sense to her, in a way. Seras was reminded of her father as a child, and all the bullies he beat up for other kids. She smiled at the memory.

"Okay," Seras said. "I'll try."

"That's my girl," Reece smiled and patted her back. Seras hugged him, and the two returned to the work bench.

Almost an hour had passed before Seras spoke again.

"Reece, would you fight for justice and sacrifice yourself?"

"Seras, if there's one thing that I've learned in my time, it's that those are the two things that people respect most."

"That's not an answer." Reece didn't say anything for a while.

"Reece," Seras said again. "How did you die?"

Reece saw the little brunette girl, covered in blood, again. His little hands were shaking her, but the girl's eyes wouldn't open again. He heard a child's voice crying out from somewhere far away.

"Nylla!"

Another vision appeared. A huge horse, armored in iron plating, scraped its hooves against the dirt road. On top of it, looking down at Reece imposingly, was a metal man. His face was hidden behind a pointed helmet, but his eyes blazed in reflection to the fires around them. He brandished his spear, and Reece saw two tiny hands pick up a stick from the ground. The horse and the hands with the stick charged at each other, and Reece could hear screaming come from all sides.

Then he was back in his workshop, and Seras was still looking up at him.

"I told you before," Reece said, smiling warmly. "I don't remember."

* * *

Two Reaper games passed since the day Seras hit that boy with a rock. Or at least, the first boy she hit with a rock. Before long Seras was the defender of the orphanage, and the little kids loved her as much as the meaner ones hated her. But they knew they couldn't touch her, and the Headmaster never did keep his promise to kick her out if she got in any more fights. To the contrary, for a while, Seras dominated the staff as much as she did the bullies because most of them were just as mean. And so long as Seras wore her pendant and carried her key, no one could touch her.

And then she didn't go to the Reaper HQ one night.

And then she didn't show up again.

And then the winner of the Reaper Game wasn't resurrected on schedule.

"Mr. Nayake!" Oni charged through the halls of the HQ. Reece turned a corner and met with him. "Where's Seras? The winner hasn't been resurrected, and no one knows what to do!"

"I know," Reece responded urgently. "I don't know where Seras is; I don't know the orphanage."

"What?!" Megan charged up the hall, Richard following close behind her. "How do you not know where she lives? Seras tells you everything!"

"... I was forbidden to interact in her RG life, so I'm not allowed to know where she lives."

The three went up in an uproar of disbelief. "Come on! What kind of rule is that?"

"What if she's in danger!"

"We need to find her."

"Look, I just follow the rules, alright?" Reece yelled over them. "We'll get Seras, okay? I'll just contact the Higher Ups, and they'll get her. No problem." The three Reapers weren't satisfied, but before they could continue to complain Reece's phone beeped.

"See? They probably already found her." He touched his phone and studied the text briefly. Suddenly his expression changed, and all the blood ran from his face. His mouth opened, but only a couple gurgling sounds came from it.

"Mr. Nayake?" Richard said cautiously. "What is it?"

"It... it can't be." The cell phone slipped from Reece's hand, and he took off down the hall. The Reapers looked at each other, and Oni picked up the phone and read the text. Megan covered her mouth in horror.

"Oh God..."

_"Due to the disappearance of composer Seras Victoria, the title shall be filled by miss Annabelle King effective immediately. Our decision is final."_

Reece burst through the doors to the throne room in a fury and stopped frozen when he saw the tall, dark figure sitting on the throne.

"Why hello, Mr. Nayake," Annabelle chimed, grinning triumphantly. "Or, no, I'll call you Reece from now on. It is my right, isn't it?"

Reece fell to his knees, his arms waving impotently. He could feel his mind snap into a million pieces in the span of hour-long seconds. There was an invisible spear jutting out of his chest, and he could feel blood gushing from the imaginary wound. Tears filled his eyes, and Reece began to sob.

"So, Reece, shall we make some games? I've got plenty of ideas!"

* * *

 

**Ok, I admit I feel bad for not including Neku and Joshua in this chapter. So...I decided to put them in the Omake!**  
**Warning 4th wall breaking ahead.**

**Omake time! ^_^**

**Joshua and Neku were on top of a building just talking, "So Joshua it seem are 2 writers don't need us for this chapter, you wanna play some Kingdom Hearts:DDD (Dream, drop,distance) I got it before you dragged me here". Neku said suggestively, Joshua nodded. Neku then turned on the game and started playing they were surprised to see themselves in the game. "So wait why are we in Twilight Town? Better yet what happened to Shibuya did you destroy it Josh?" Neku questioned Joshua. "Neku, why would I destroy Shibuya you won the game and made me change my mind I wouldn't backstab you." Neku just glared at Joshua and then returned to the game.**

**A few minutes later Neku is dumbstruck when he sees Joshua sprout wings**  
**"WHAT THE HELL ! WHY DO YOU HAVE ANGEL WINGS?!" Neku Shouted.**  
**"I don't know maybe Nomura decided to give me my wings finally" Joshua said calmly**  
**Neku again glared at him.**

**(3 Hrs later)**

**Neku looked agitated, one because he realized him and his friend were only put there for tutorial, two because he is having to revisit Traverse town...again.**

**"So is there any other reason why they are back in Traverse Town other than the fact there chasing after Spellican?" Neku questioned. "I don't think so I think this for some screen time that it.",Joshua Replied to Neku.**

**(3 more hours and 1 annoying boss fight later)**

**Neku Has almost completed the game and he very mad, "So you're telling me we are only in the game for tutorial and we don't even get to assist Sora or RIku against Org.13 well that total BS."Neku stated/ Joshua nodded his head in agreement.**  
**"I mean this is more disappointing than the countdown that Square Enix had to countdown to a stupid Soundtrack, which pissed thousand of fans off."Neku stated again. "Well I do have to agree it would have been better to see us fight alongside Sora or Riku, but this is the 3DS were talking about,it probably didn't have enough power to do so." Joshua explained to Neku. "Well I guess you're right it better than being forgotten by our fans" Neku said calmly.**

**Soon Neku finished the game and watched the ending credits go by,**

**"Well, that was actually pretty decent it was actually pretty fun" Neku said honestly, Joshua just nodded.**  
**"So do you think we will ever get a sequel?" Neku asked Joshua. "Hopefully I mean there are fangirls that loved the game, i'm pretty sure they will have our sequel between 5 to 10 years." Joshua stated truly. Neku just agreed and waited for their turn to be in the next chapter**

 

  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Minor dictionary time:  
> The Reapers' Game (死神のゲーム Shinigami no Gēmu) is a one-week competition in which those who have died may participate. Each potential participant is approached shortly after their passing and is given the choice by the Reaper. Games usually take place weeks apart, but sometimes games can be held two times in a row, and in rare instances, three times. Every contestant is called a Player and is given a player pin as a sign of his or her entry. To enter in the game every player has to pay an 'entry fee', that is taken by the Player must give up whatever is dearest to them in order to participate. This entry fee can be physical, such as mementos or people, or more physical or immaterial such as one's appearance, dreams, or memories.


	6. Battle at the London Eye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We officially have a cover for the story a very special thanks to Robert Fiddler or deviantart who gladly helped us make a cover!  
> The link to the Cover art--- http://inusoragirl.deviantart.com/art/The-Lost-Composer-Of-London-Coverart-640857278

_You know, all this weird crap is really starting to piss me off,_ Seras thought up in the London skyline. _First vampires and ghouls, then portals and mystical teenagers, now afterlives filled with games, monsters, and people that keep recognizing me. This is all so ridiculous I don't know whether to find it annoying or hilarious!_

"Could you please just take me back home?" Seras groaned. "I'd like to get some damned sleep."

Joshua dialed a few numbers into his phone. "Of course. Sweet dreams!" He smiled cheerfully, and Seras fell through a portal, screaming in surprise. Neku could hear her cursing them as she fell. "Hmm, I don't think she likes us very much. Why might that be?"

Neku sighed. The saddest thing was, Joshua looked like he was genuinely wondering why. "Aren't we supposed to, I don't know, recruit her or something? She wasn't very open to anything you told her. And now you're letting her go, so this got us nowhere."

"Hmph," Joshua chuckled. "We told her what we meant to. This situation needs to be handled with some finesse Neku; we can't force our hand."

"You had no problem forcing this on me," Neku mumbled. "Actually, he forces everything on me!"

"It's not polite to mumble Neku!" Joshua waggled his finger. "In any case, the seeds have been planted, now we wait for our flower to grow big and strong. In the meantime…" He stepped to the edge of the building. "I'll leave you to frolic through the garden!" He fell off and dropped into a portal.

"Hey wait a second!" Neku ran after him, but the portal was already gone. A vein in Neku's head bulged angrily.

"I really hate that guy."

* * *

*Beeelch* Oni pounded his chest and raised his bottle into the air like a champion, and laughed like a drunk. "Haha-hic-ha! Try and beat that –hic- Richy!" Richard pounded back a pint of beer, nearly knocking himself over. The room fell into silence momentarily, and then…

*UUUUUURP!* The two Reapers raised their hyped cries and laughed hardily. Rocky chugged down his own beer, but nothing came back up. Megan pinched the bridge of her nose in disgust.

"I swear you guys, I can smell that shit from the other side of the room!"

Oni raised his empty bottle. "That means it's –hic- working!" The men laughed and clinked their drinks together. Megan walked over and took Richard's new beer.

"Alright then!" She slammed it back, spilling a lot of it and guzzling beer and air alike. A few seconds later…

*BUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRP!* They were rendered speechless, and Megan grinned, slamming the mug back on the counter.

"And that's how a LADY does it, bitches!" The Reapers burst out with laughter, and Oni poured (or spilled) another beer. He saw someone enter the door from the corner of his beer-goggled eyes. It was Reece, carrying an alarmed look on his face.

"Hey-hic-hey, look who it is! Mr. Nayake, my man! I haven't seen you in ages old man, does our good Composer Anny really have such a tight grip on your dick?" Megan hit Oni on the arm to make him shut up.

"What is it, sir?" Richard asked, noticing the look in his eyes.

Reece looked over at them. As soon as he had left the Composer's office, the reality of the situation struck him all over again. What Annabelle wanted to do was… unthinkable. But Reece was required to obey orders, it was his very mantra. But this… He composed himself instantly, regaining most of his authoritative figure.

"Seras is alive." There was only the sound of bottles crashing to the floor. The Reapers all sat up much straighter now, becoming very attentive.

Oni, in particular, seemed to transform from inebriated to sober in a millisecond. "Wha?"

"She's still living in London," Reece continued. "I don't know where, but Seras is definitely still out there. However we-" Oni strode past Reece quickly, filled with determination. The others followed closely after him. "Stop," Reece commanded as he appeared in between them and the door.

"Stop?" Oni remarked. "What do you mean stop? You said Seras is out there! We need to find her, right now!" The others agreed.

"Listen to me, it's more complicated than that!" Reece tried to argue. Suddenly someone pushed past him, but the person came from behind him. It was Annabelle.

"Oh Anny, thank God!" Oni said, relieved. "You've got to talk Nayake down; he found Seras and-!" Annabelle hit him across the head, knocking him to the ground. Anger reddened her face.

"My title is Composer King, and you will address me as such!" The room became muggy with tension, and no one dared speak for minutes. Then, as quickly as she became angry, Annabelle exhaled and brightened up like nothing had happened. She even smiled at her Reapers.

"Reece, let them go look for the girl." Reece nodded, keeping his blank expression.

Oni picked himself up. "Thank you, Composer King," Megan said.

"Of course," Annabelle said, and she turned to leave. "Be sure to bring me her head."

"Wait," Richard said. "What?"

"Her head," she repeated matter-of-factly. "Preferably separated from the rest of her body. I don't really mind what you do with those parts of her. But I want Seras Victoria's head."

"Why?!"

"She killed Bob." There was silence again. "Just ask Reece, he saw her do it." Annabelle walked out the door, calling back casually. "Bring me her head. That's an order!"

The Reapers were too stunned to speak. Their beloved young Composer found after so many years. Just to be named their enemy. Rocky was the first to speak.

"Mr. Nayake," he said, with a strange glint in his eyes. "Did Seras really kill Bobby?"

Reece showed no emotion. His voice was kept to a cool monotone. "She had no idea who he was, or who I was. Seras bashed young Bob's head into mush, with her bare hands." Rocky grit his teeth, shaking ever so slightly. He was the most sensitive to losing people, and they all knew it. Megan put her hand on his shoulder, but he pulled away. He tried to storm out of the room until Reece blocked his path. The Producer looked down on Rocky.

"Composer King ordered Bob to kill Seras, long before I had a chance to share this information. She acted in self-defense." Rocky pushed past him and disappeared into the labyrinth.

"So what do we do?" Richard asked, more to himself than the others. They all knew that nobody had any real answers to this situation.

"We are required to obey our Composer's orders," Reece stated blankly.

"Fuck that," Oni spit. It was the first thing to come out of his mouth since Annabelle struck him, other than the blood. "Our little girl is out there, and now she's in danger. I'll be damned if I'm going to be part of that danger."

"You were ordered to bring Seras' head back to Reaper HQ," Reece said, turning to face Oni. "That is what you are going to do. Bring her head BACK here." The Reapers saw the flash of plotting on their Producer's face. "And I was ordered to allow you to do this. That is all I was ordered to do." And then, for the first time in many years, Oni, Megan, and Richard saw Reece Nayake smile. And they smiled back at him, and the Producer and the Reapers nodded to each other.

"You said she didn't recognize you," Megan said. "Why do you think that is?"

"Unsure. But at this moment in time Seras' memory isn't what's most important. That obstacle will be faced when we overcome the one we have now. Right now we search the city high and low until we find Seras. I found her with two boys, whose pictures are on your phones." They flipped open their cells to confirm.

"Wow, skinny little bastards," Oni commented.

"They may know where Seras is, so keep an eye out."

"Alright," Richard said, filled with determination as much as the others. "Let's go find Seras!"

"No," Oni said. "Let's go find our Composer."

* * *

"So…" the girl behind the cash-register hesitated, looking down at what appeared to be an animated stick with spiky hair and headphones. "All purple clothes, huh? Don't want anything else? Maybe some blue jeans, or a black hoodie?..."

"No," Neku sighed. "That's what I want."

"Okay, that's cool. That's cool…" The cashier automatically scanned the various bizarre labels. She thought they must have been Asian imports or something. "That'll be 24 pounds and seven ten-pence. Will that be cash or card?"

Neku remained dazed for a moment. "Umm… how much is that in yen?"

After having been kicked out, Neku wandered the streets of London for a while. The air smelled lightly of grease, but he didn't find it necessarily unpleasant. If anything, it was just like Shibuya: busy streets, busy people, busy lives. Basic city life, whoop-dee-doo. Off in the distance, he could see the London Eye, a giant Ferris wheel looming over the harbor. It seemed a touch gaudy.

It also seemed like there were a lot of kids running towards it. In fact, there were a lot running towards it. And not a single person noticed them.

Neku stood contemplating this for a while. This was obviously one of the Reaper Games, that much didn't need explaining. The London Eye made sense as an objective; Composer's had quite a hard-on for public landmarks in Neku's experience.

One Player was approaching Neku from behind. Neku held out his arm and stopped him, much to the Player's shock.

"What's your objective?" he asked. The poor kid was still reeling from the blow.

"Huh?" he whimpered. "A-are you a Reaper?"

"Do I look like I have wings?" Neku spat sarcastically. He pulled out his Player's pin and showed it to him. "You're objective, what is it?"

"Uh, to touch the London Eye," the Player offered cautiously. Neku thought for a moment, waving the Player forward.

_A simple goal,_ Neku thought. _And a simple goal means that a Reaper is probably hanging around to get in their way. Waiting to thin the herd._ He tapped at his Player's pin and scanned the crowd around him. No blocked minds, save a few sluggish Players.

Up above Neku on the adjacent rooftops, Richard and Oni monitored his movements.

"Nayake was right," Oni said. "Kid's a Living Player."

Richard nodded. "Certainly makes our job more complicated. I can only imagine what his preconceptions are about Reapers."

"They do some weird shit in the Japanese Reaper Games," Oni commented. "Not sure what he's been through. Surviving the Games is one thing, but coming out as a Living Player is unheard of." They saw Neku look in the direction of the Ferris wheel. "Come on kid, take the hint…" He started following the Players, and Oni pumped his fist.

Richard picked up his phone. "The spiky-haired kid is heading straight for you. Prepare to intercept."

"Copy that," Megan's voice buzzed back out at them. "Just stay low. If we spook all these Players than this could get ugly very fast."

It wasn't long before Neku was able to pick the female Reaper out of the crowd. Beyond his inability to read her, he could see her shirt stretching out in the back where her wings were. His Player pin was replaced, and he pulled out the appropriate battle pins.

Neku stepped up beside the woman, pretending to watch the Ferris wheel spin. "I take it you aren't here to intervene with your own Players," he spoke quietly to avoid drawing attention. He knew none of the Real Ground people could see the Reaper. None of them except for him.

"Oh, they can have their fun. We have more urgent business with you anyway. They don't need to get involved."

"Hmm?" Neku mimed confusion. "What business could you have with me? I'm just a tourist enjoying the sights."

"Shut up!" Megan spat at him. "You know why we're here. You and your friend were with a girl, Seras Victoria. Where is she?"

Neku pressed his headphones closer to his ears. He couldn't help but smile a little. "You keep saying 'we,' but I only see the one of you. Please tell me you aren't one of those insane Reapers. The insane ones can be so Zeta slow."

"The others are around," Megan said, ignoring his odd comment. "Just to make sure you don't try anything funny. Although," she added with a smirk, "you couldn't anyway. We are invisible. You aren't. You start teleporting around and shooting fireballs, and the police will be here faster than you can blink. So I would recommend you tell me what I want to know."

"Hmph, you thought this through."

"We have to be cautious. Especially with a Living Player like you."

"No, I don't think that's it," Neku chided. "You have something, even more, threatening than me to deal with right now. How many Players did you have to lure here in order to get my attention?" Megan's eyes widened. "Even with a Reaper's power, you wouldn't stand a chance against those numbers."

"And even with a Player's power, you can't last against a squadron of armed police! So tell me where she is goddammit!" Megan was becoming greatly exasperated by Neku's stalling.

Neku looked up at the clouds. "You're right. I can't fight that many cops. Not if they're focused on me. But you see…" He finally looked over at Megan, meeting her in the eye. "I've been spending a lot of my time recently with this asshole who keeps dragging me places that I don't want to go. A constant thorn in my side. But he's also taught me a few things. For example…" He shuffled through his pins, resting on one with a cracked, eggshell-like pattern on it. "He taught me how to plan ahead."

Every step Neku had taken on the pavement, every single object he had touched between speaking with the Player and meeting Megan, suddenly exploded in a dozen fiery bursts. The crowd went up in a roar of panic, making cries of terrorism and scrambling toward the nearest exits. Megan was stunned, and from the corner of his eye Neku saw Oni and Richard descending from the rooftops and closing in on him.

Using the few seconds he had, Neku spun around Megan and lifted the back of her shirt over her head, revealing her spiny black wings. He drew in his breath and screamed as loud as he could:

"REEEEAPEEER!"

He didn't wait to see how the Players would react. By the time Neku had teleported a safe distance away, all the fire and lightning being thrown at Megan illuminated the scene like a spotlight. For a shadow of an instant, he dared to believe that the Reaper had already died. Those beliefs were dashed when he saw her Noise erupt out of the smoke at the Players: an infectious red giant squid squirmed its way into the fray and started tossing and tearing whatever it could grasp with its tentacles, which were thick as logs.

Oni and Richard ran to Megan's side and helped her up.

"You forgot to tell him that we weren't going to hurt Seras, didn't you?" Oni jabbed her knowingly.

"Just go get him!" she retorted. The two Reapers made chase, following behind Neku.

In the midst of all the surrounding chaos, between the flight of the living and the grueling battle between the dead, Neku couldn't help but allow a little bit of his inner man-child out. All the exits were blocked by pedestrians and two Reapers were tearing ass towards him, so he saw little choice: he had to ride the London Eye.

* * *

Meanwhile, Joshua had discovered the loveliest little tea shop a few miles across town. He sipped at his piping hot Sencha green tea, which he was pleasantly surprised they even served and nibbled at a plate of tea cakes he shared with an empty chair.

A young lady approached his table and waved courteously. She had the most splendid white skirt and tucked blouse, and her warm smile radiated pure smitten affection toward Joshua.

"Forgive me," she spoke shyly, "but would you care for some company? My name is Larissa."

Joshua peered up at her and returned an infinitely warm smile. "Yoshiya Kiryu but my friends call me Joshua. It would honor me if you did as well, my lovely Larissa." He bowed to her most sincerely, and Larissa giggled and curtsied in reply. He stood and pulled out the extra chair for her, and with a blush and a shy smile she accepted.

* * *

Fire and lightning were shooting out of the London Eye. Boulders cascaded down the sides, threatening to crush any hapless Players that came too close. Spikes of ice shot out from every angle, dodged narrowly by the Reapers. And all the while it spun on, playing a merry little tune.

"You can give up whenever you want!" Neku shouted down at the Reapers, throwing more fireballs at them. Oni scaled up the wheel, his Tamed Noise gorilla in tow. He did an extravagant flip up onto the carriage with Neku and threw a punch. He only struck air, though, as Neku was already teleporting back down the wheel.

"Are you kidding?" Oni yelled after him, swan diving into the air. "I haven't had this much fun in ages!" He grasped at a wire and flung himself back into the wheel, sending his noise out at Neku. The two met with arms raised high, but while the Noise aimed to strike with its fists Neku aimed to strike it with lightning. The lightning was faster, and the Noise cascaded off the side into the pavement below.

Neku teleported away again as Richard flew in and tried to grab him. "So you both know this is completely sordid, right?" he called out to Oni and Neku as they exchanged blows. "We didn't come here to fight!" He narrowly dodged out of the way of an ice spike rushing unnervingly close to his genitals.

"Huh," Neku said, ducking into a carriage and popping back out with something in his hand. "You're right!" He leapt out and let himself careen to the bottom. "See ya!"

"Oh no, you don't!" Oni dived after him. The two fell for a spell, watching each other. Neku looked to the ground and saw the gorilla Noise poising itself below him. Oni smiled triumphantly.

Neku returned that same triumphant smile. He held up his hand, showing a half-eaten bag of popcorn and an eggshell pin. Oni realized his mistake too late; Neku teleported away, leaving the bag to land on the Noise and blow both it and Oni back into the air. Neku resurfaced from the Thames River a short distance away, protecting his headphones from the water. The Players were keeping Megan's attention, and for the moment, no one knew Neku's location. It seemed like as good a time as ever to make his getaway.

"Nice try kid." Two huge talons yanked Neku out of the water, and he soared straight into the air. He was being carried by a giant raven, and looking at him from atop the bird sat Richard. "Why don't we go somewhere a little less explosive, hmm?"

Trapped and rendered immobile by the Noise's iron grip, Neku had no choice but to let himself be taken a mile downriver. Richard released him on the roof of a supermarket near the bank and dismounted his Noise. Neku prepared his pins again, ready for round two.

"Please don't," Richard groaned, raising his hands. "I've had quite enough."

"You attacked me first," Neku said.

"Meg was just talking, and you blew the fucking bay up!"

"I don't mean that. Your dog from the other night, and the Reaper."

"Bobby…" Richard sighed and covered his face with a hand. "Look, that's complicated."

Neku snorted. "I don't really do complicated."

"Then I'll be clear: we don't want to hurt Seras. Well, we Reapers don't… She was our friend! It's…"

"Complicated?" Neku joked.

"Yeah. Actually, it's a load of bullocks, but complicated works too." Neku lowered his pins. Richard noted the gesture and decided to capitalize on it.

"I know Oni can be a little, uh, over-zealous, and Meg didn't exactly handle her part well either. But we aren't looking for a conflict. We just want to help Seras. She's in danger."

"I could tell. And let me guess: it isn't just a few Reapers after her head, is it?"

"I take it you're familiar with Composers?"

"Heh, you could say that," Neku said ruefully.

"Then you know how much power Seras is going up against."

"Yeah. But she doesn't remember any of you. Her memory of the Games is a blank. How exactly are you going to convince her that you're all buddy-buddy?"

"We'll figure it out," Richard said, and he meant it. Between Oni, Mr. Nayake, Megan and himself, they had to be able to come up with a way to make her remember.

Neku couldn't help but chuckle. "Figure it out huh? Well, good luck with that." He teleported from the roof into the back alley and walked into the street. Richard ran after him.

"Where are you going?"

"The way I see it," Neku called back casually, "if we stick together it will only make things harder for the both of us. You go back to your buddies; I've got my own things to do."

Richard was incredulous. "But what about Seras? Where is she?"

"If I decide that you really aren't going to kill her, then maybe I'll let you know. 'Til then." He waved back to the Reaper and walked away into the city.

_Great,_ Neku thought. _Now I'm even more lost in this city. I need to get some money._

* * *

"You called for me, Master?" Seras descended into the black tomb that made Alucard's living quarters. The ancient vampire sat upon his throne, sipping at a fresh glass of blood wine. Beyond that the entire room was barren. She heard that it used to have a seventy-inch plasma screen TV, but that was ridiculous.

"You have been wandering, Draculina," Alucard said to her. "Wandering beyond where you are told to dwell." He placed his wine on the small tray beside him. "Chasing after the newly dead."

Seras was taken aback. "How did you..." She stopped herself, looking into Alucard's darkened face. Of course, he would know. She bent a knee to him and lowered her head in guilt. "Forgive me, Master. I acted without thinking."

"Heheheh," Alucard clicked above her. "The dead come to us in a new form as of late. Those children wore the mark of death about them as though it were simple clothing. Strange how on the eve of a great conflict between the living, that the dead would also begin to stir with whispers of war."

Seras looked up, finding herself more perplexed. "Is there something you know Master?" Silently she wondered; _does he know about the Reapers?_

Alucard would say no more on the matter. "Return to your quarters and sleep. It is unnatural for us to be wakeful at this hour of the day." Disappointed, Seras rose to escape the tomb. At the foot of the stairs, she heard her Master's voice again.

"In the tides of war, both the living and the dead will come to us who live between them, because we hold more power than either side could dream of. They will beg for our aid or cry for our blood, whichever best suits their temperament."

The giant hound and the Reaper appeared in Seras' mind. With them came the other man, "Reece," who put her to her knees and then fled. She put the memories to the side, for fear of Alucard somehow seeing into her brain and discovering the true depths of the dead's conflict. If he didn't know already.

"Yes, my Master."


	7. Deals and Plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a small note for those interested in what Annabelle may look like please copy the link! Also again thank you to the wonderful Robert Fiddler on Deviantart. He is a big Hellsing fan like us and practically nails it style. So please check him and his art out!
> 
> Annabelle King--- http://inusoragirl.deviantart.com/art/Annabelle-King-640857288

"Oh dear God…" Integra sighed as fire, lightning, and brimstone cascaded from the London Eye on her television screen. Neku was clearly visible clambering about the wheel, shooting fireballs and striking at nothing. "He's not even trying to be subtle!"

Walter lit her a new cigar. "It's quite miraculous the Ferris wheel came out unscathed."

"Except for all the burn marks and nearly collapsing from the boy's last stunt," Integra spat, chewing her cigar like a stick of gum. "This has gone on long enough. Summon Alucard, Walter."

"No need, my Master." Alucard appeared from the darkness behind her. He looked a touch embarrassed. "Forgive me, I took an interest in the news, but I lack my own television."

Integra waved a dismissive hand. "Take care of this and I'll buy you a new one, even bigger than the last."

A sinister grin pointed from Alucard's pale face. "What is your command, my Master?"

"I have been far too lenient with these boys since they first escaped. I'd hoped they might simply remain quiet and fade into obscurity." She waved at the news in front of them. "Clearly this is not the case."

Alucard noted Neku's strikes at the air. "The boy is fighting something." His grin widened. "Fighting a great deal."

"I don't care if he's fighting the fucking Spanish Armada!" Integra grumbled. "He's causing a row that we do not need. We are having a war meeting with the Queen in the morning to discuss the fate of Millennium, and I want those boys dead by the time you arrive Alucard."

"Yes, my Master." Alucard turned to leave.

"And for God's sake, don't do it in public!" Integra added. "Keep it quiet, we don't need more news coverage."

* * *

There was a great darkness moving through the city. Joshua felt it where no one else did, and it made him smile. It was inching ever closer to him with each passing breath.

"Larissa," Joshua interrupted her casually. "I'm sorry, but I think you should leave."

She stared at him, aghast. "What do you mean? We'd been having such fun! I thought you liked me…"

Joshua leaned across the table and took her hand. "Dear Larissa, I do like you! These past hours are a time that I will never forget, and that I pray can be repeated." Larissa blushed heavily. "But I came here to meet someone, and they will arrive very soon. It would be better for you if you weren't present when I receive them."

"Who is it?" She gasped. "You don't have a girlfriend, do you?"

Joshua couldn't help but laugh at this. "Of course not. It's just a person whom I have business with. He's quite a character really, and I'm afraid he would disturb you if you stayed. So please, you must go."

With an air of sadness, Larissa acquiesced. "If you insist, Joshua." He smiled and kissed her hand, and she blushed again. Joshua noted the trembling in her knees.

"Until we meet again," he smiled as she exited the shop. No sooner than she had reached the door, a red hat and cloak strode past her. The shadow remained silent, standing above Joshua until the girl had disappeared in the window.

"Impressive British accent," Alucard commented. "The girl was putty in your hands."

Joshua grinned his everlasting grin. "Oh, I'm sure you've courted similar work in your days. Although I doubt those women made it through the night." Alucard returned the smile, his sharpened teeth showing through his shadow. Joshua gestured to the newly-empty chair. "Please, join me for some tea."

"I don't much care for tea," Alucard replied. "Why don't we leave instead?" It was more a command than a request.

"For the sake of my health, I think I should stay right here," Joshua jested.

Alucard slipped his glasses down his nose, looking Joshua in the eyes and pointing his hand at him. "You will come with me outside!" he commanded.

"I will stay right in this chair," Joshua mimicked. He gave an innocent smile to the vampire.

"Hmph," Alucard grumbled, pushing his glasses back to his eyes. "I suppose it was rather foolish to try that on the dead."

"Rather," Joshua agreed. He spied Alucard's gloved hand reaching into his cloak. "You know, I don't think your master would appreciate you assassinating a child in a public tea shop in the middle of the day." He pulled out his phone, which was in the progress of making a call. The caller ID read "Integra Hellsing." "Perhaps I should ask her?"

Alucard froze. The ringer went off, and a woman's voice came through the speaker. "Hello, who is this?"

Joshua smiled at the vampire and brought the phone to his ear. "Madam Hellsing? It's Joshua. Is it a custom of your organization to perform sloppy assassinations in the middle of the day?"

There was a pause on the end of the line. "How did you get this number?"

"The phone book, of course." Joshua laughed. "So, care to explain why you sent your vampire after me?"

"I don't need to explain anything to you, boy."

Joshua thought for a minute. "Neku did something reckless and flashy where everyone could see him, right?" Alucard chuckled beside him and sat in the empty chair. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

Another pause. "The boy made the London Eye look like the Second Coming."

"Haha, yeah that sounds about right. I'm sure he has a good excuse if you'd be so kind as to hear him out. Perhaps we could come by your manor, discuss it over dinner?"

"Why should I listen to your dribble? I have quite enough shit to deal with without you adding onto the pile."

"The same problems will arise whether Neku and I are present or not. You are only accustomed to fighting the living and the undead, Sir Integra, you are not prepared to fight those who have remained dead. Even with your vampire commando." Integra did not comment. Joshua could sense her beginning to understand. "However, if you enlist my help, we can handle the dead for you free of charge. All I ask is that you listen to what I have to say. You can even hide us away from the world if that would make you feel better.

"So, what do you say?"

* * *

I'm going to go out on a limb here; Neku thought to himself while racing through the alleyways of London as police dogs bit at his heels and officers shouted orders into their walkie-talkies. I am going to say that being labeled a magical terrorist is probably one of the worse things to happen to me recently.

It wasn't long after news got out about the incident at the London Eye that several civilians identified Neku and ratted out his location. He had managed to get some free chicken out of a terrified shop owner before the SWAT team busted in. Neku was able to teleport to the rooftop, but the sky was littered with police and news helicopters. Both were shooting him while he climbed over a chain fence to escape the hounds snarling at him. There was already a blockade on the other side of the alley, Neku had expected that. He pulled out one of his pins and blew into it lightly, and all the cars and people in front of him were carried into the air by small whirlwinds. They probably wouldn't be hurt too bad when they hit the ground.

The entire area had been cordoned off to try and keep Neku in a controlled environment, so he didn't have to worry about getting hit by a bus or being slowed down by a crowd of civilians. It was just him and what might as well have been the entire British police force. The odds were not in Neku's favor; he'd already had to heal a few bullet wounds on-the-fly, and they were not grazing shots.

Neku was zig-zagging his way down a road when the music in his headphones cut out and Joshua's voice sputtered into his ears.

"You're on TV," he said. Neku could perfectly envision Joshua sitting on a couch somewhere, flipping channels and smiling at the footage of cops taking shots at him. "I never took you for the 'center of attention' type Neku." Joshua snickered. "Although I suppose you do attract eyes wherever you go."

"Most of the time it's your fault too!" Neku yelled into the air. He realized Joshua probably couldn't hear him. He was just projecting his voice into the headphones. A bullet bounced off the asphalt near Neku's feat. The snipers in the helicopters had reloaded apparently.

"You're probably trying to talk back to me right now. I'm going to guess you're blaming me. Very mature," Joshua chided. "Anyway, there is a portal waiting for you at the next intersection. Get their before the cops and you're home free! You can fill us in on what happened when you get here." Neku's music cut back in, and he could see the swirling black portal in the road up ahead. For the first time, Neku would choose to go down one of these hell-pits. He took no pleasure in it.

He leapt in right before a dozen police cars converged on the spot, and the portal closed, leaving Neku in the darkness. The drop lasted longer than it usually did. That meant he was probably going somewhere indoors since precise portals like that take longer to form. Neku mentally chastised himself for falling into these things enough times to know that. It gave him time to right himself so he might land on his feet.

The portal opened back up beneath him, and he landed on the hard wood floor of Hellsing Manor, surrounded by soldiers pointing their guns at him. One particularly cavalier Wild Goose had a grenade launcher.

Joshua waved at him from a couch. The television was currently reviewing the footage of Neku jumping into the portal. Soldiers were also pointing guns at him, although not as many. He saw Seras at the other side of the room; her eyes were flashing between him and the television, as though she were comparing the footage to the reality. Beside her loomed the vampire, Alucard, Neku remembered. There was no sign of the woman.

"Welcome back," a soldier said. He had a heavy French accent and a cigarette, and Neku only vaguely recalled him being present when he and Joshua had first arrived. Based on his demeanor though Neku guessed he was a commanding officer. "Please, make yourself at home. There are snacks by the couch." He stepped forward, giving his best intimidation impression. "And if my men so much as hear one of your little trinkets, they will turn you into Swiss cheese. Do not test them." Neku remained unimpressed, particularly when comparing him to the vampire just to the right. But he gave a little nod and went over to the couch.

Joshua offered a plate. "Care for some cake?" Neku very much wanted some cake. All he'd eaten in the past few days was a piece of chicken.

Bernadotte walked back to join Seras and Alucard. "Are we really going to leave these two here alone? I have faith in my men, but the purple one can make explosions!"

"Yes, we are," Alucard stated. "We are going to the war meeting, and they are staying here."

Seras shrugged. "Integra's orders. Besides," she looked over to Joshua. "I'm sure they'll be here when we get back."

Bernadotte sighed and puffed on his cigarette. "Alright. Lead on, Mister Vampire."

* * *

Hours later, Integra barged through the doors into the living area where Joshua and Neku were being watched. Seras followed tenderly behind her.

Joshua looked back, munching casually on some beef. "How was your meeting?"

Integra stepped around the soldiers and stood between the boys and the television, which was back at the footage of Neku on the London Eye. "You." She looked at Neku. "I will give you fifteen seconds to explain yourself before I decide you aren't worth my time and I have you executed for terrorism. Alucard." The vampire rose behind the couch and pointed his guns at Neku and Joshua's heads. "Your time has already started."

Neku paused to look uncertainly at Joshua. There really was no good answer to these sorts of questions. "Would you believe I was attacked by ghosts?"

"You." Integra turned to Joshua. "You have ten seconds to tell me why."

"Neku and I have a history. Our association with death makes us targets." He didn't break stride and finished in under half the time given. Seras was a little impressed.

A chair was brought for Integra, and she sat pondering these words for a moment. She placed a cigar between her teeth, and Walter appeared to cut and light it. She leaned back, letting the weight of the day fall off her shoulders for a moment. "What do you think Walter?"

"Ghosts do seem a touch farfetched, Miss Integra," Walter remarked. "Perhaps Master Alucard might have some worthy insight to this story." Integra turned her gaze up to her vampire, still in his stature and prepared to blow two young boy's brains across her floor.

"What say you, Alucard? Can we trust their testimonies?"

Alucard smirked. "Police Girl?" Seras stepped up from the wall.

"Yes, Master?"

"Look to the footage of this boy. Tell us what you see."

Seras obeyed unquestioningly. "He's fighting two men, rather skillfully." Integra and the soldiers turned to look at the screen. Neku appeared to be swinging through the wiring and summoning spears of ice at the air. "One of the men seems to be commanding a multicolored ape. The ape doesn't stand a chance." A bolt of lightning strikes an invisible object in front of Neku. "Down on the ground, there's a brawl. Dozens of children are fighting a large squid, only slightly smaller than the Eye. There is a woman on top of it, probably commanding it as well."

"Very good Police Girl," Alucard remarked. "Your eyes are developing nicely though you underestimated the number of children in the fight."

"Thank you, Master."

"Hmm." Integra turned back to Neku and Joshua, chewing on her cigar. "You. Kiryu was your name, yes?"

Joshua smiled. "At your service."

"So you claim." She leaned forward, meeting Joshua's eyes. Both sides exuded power. Neither was intimidated. "One final question before I believe your story. Why are these ghosts a threat to me?"

"Lady Integra," Joshua grinned knowingly. "They are why." He pointed to Alucard and Seras. Seras glanced over at Joshua, wondering where he might go with this. If he tells her about how he thinks, I was one of them…

"Vampires?" Walter questioned.

"Yes sir, vampires," Joshua chimed. "In the land of the dead, there is a hierarchy between the Pla—ghosts, and the Reapers. Then there are angels and gods, but right now let's focus on the Reapers. Their job is to manage dead children, a new group every week. Their purpose is managing death, and maintaining it. Vampires are undead; they cheat death with their mere existence! Reapers hate them a great deal, and you have two. That paints a very big target on your organization's back, especially theirs."

Integra considered this. She motioned to Alucard, and he holstered his weapons.

"It's worth noting," Alucard said, "that this boy is among the dead."

Integra looked to Joshua, who shrugged. "And the other?"

"Alive," Alucard answered. "Coated in death, but his heart beats and his blood is warm."

"Don't talk about my blood," Neku snapped.

"Kiryu-"

"Please, call me Joshua." He smiled welcomingly.

"Kiryu," Integra continued. "If you're dead, why would you help us? Shouldn't you show just as much disdain towards vampires as any other Reaper?"

"What makes you think I'm a Reaper?" Joshua asked innocently.

"Don't play stupid with me, I can see how much power you have. You are a commander, someone who people obey. Whether they realize it or not."

"Hmph," Joshua nodded. "You have a sharp eye, Lady Integra. Well if you must know, no I do not share any love for your vampire pets." Alucard barely reacted to this, although Seras did feel a touch hurt though she had no idea why she cared. "But it seems you have forced my hand in the matter. We came here to look for someone and happened to fall into your lawn. Now it seems we are tied together."

"That brings me to my next point," Integra interrupted. "This friend of yours. What significance do they have? Who are they?"

"Oh to you, nothing." Seras felt her hair stand on the back of her neck. She felt the urge to sneeze but held it back desperately. "He's a high figure in the Reaper society, akin to a Lord of the UG – land of the dead, excuse me – in London. He's been dethroned by a rebellious youth, and we're here to make sure that arrangement is very temporary. Although we've been met with some resistance." Seras felt like there were eyes on her, but the entire room was looking to Joshua. She fought the urge to fidget in her boots.

"So they don't matter to me," Integra concluded.

"Not at all. Actually, I take it back, there is one benefit to you if he regains power: he is much more pro-vampire than other Reapers, and could paint a more positive light on your organization. Then you wouldn't have to worry about any Reapers impeding your duties."

"Hmm…" Integra looked back to the television. Neku had just lifted an entire squadron of police cars off the ground as though they were balloons on the wind. "So you had a proposition to make?"

Joshua's grin widened. He had her. "It's simple: you don't want us out there unsupervised, and we can help you. So long as you grant us some time here in London, under guard of course, and we are allowed to search for our lost Reaper Lord, we will personally protect your organization from any hostile threat, Reaper or otherwise. Neku, of course, would have to remain here, being a wanted criminal, but he's quiet and doesn't require much attention."

Neku didn't respond to this and ignored Joshua, knowing fully well that he was proving his point.

"So," Joshua concluded. "What do you think? Can we work together to make sure we both succeed?"

Integra identified the politician speech. The child was trying to work her, and she did not care for that. However his words were true, and the advantage she could have with these two boys was notable. The living one could fight off two of these Reaper soldiers with ease if she were to trust Alucard's word. That alone could prove a tide-turner in battle against Millennium if it came to that. And he seemed subservient to Kiryu, so his power could be far greater. The portals alone were proof of his worth.

"Very well." Integra rose from her seat, and Walter silently carried it away. "From this day until the foreseeable future, you two are now indentured soldiers in the Hellsing Organization. You will obey my every command, no matter how dangerous or degrading. You will offer up your very existence in battle and outside of battle to further our cause, or else you will die at my hands."

Joshua rose from his seat and bowed, grinning a Cheshire grin the whole time. Neku looked over to Seras. There was an uneasiness in her eyes, as though she was looking over the horizon and saw tornadoes crawling down the countryside toward her homestead. She met his glance, and he nodded to her. Silently Neku assured her that she wasn't crazy, he saw the tornadoes too.

"We are honored to serve you, Lady Hellsing."

* * *

"So…" Annabelle rolled to syllable off her tongue like a sour cherry. She sat on her throne, high in her supremacy. Her Reapers knelt down before her, now only four in number. She felt a twinge of mourning over the lost Bobby though she knew sending him would likely end in his death. She would still miss his cowardly ways. Perhaps she shouldn't have abused him so horribly. But, it was too late to feel regret now. Composer Annabelle King had a goal, and it was the very top. "Why don't you each tell me about the London Eye."

There was a pause between the groups. Rocky turned a vindictive glance toward the other three but said nothing. He had no part in this; he would take no blame and offer no salve.

"Composer King, we were simply following a lead toward Seras Victoria, as you commanded," Richard spoke first.

"A lead?"

"Yes," Megan sputtered next. Her body was riddled with bruises and burns. A chunk of hair was missing from her head, and her wings drooped painfully. Annabelle pitied the girl. Simply not strong enough to handle all those Players at once. Such a shame. "The boy was believed to be associated with Victoria."

"Yes, the Living Player. Put up quite a fight, and outsmarted the three of you." The disappointment in her voice was emphasized. Annabelle had hoped her soldiers would be stronger than this by now. More useful to her ascension.

"Forgive us, Composer King," Richard appeased to her. "We will try harder next time."

"You will," Annabelle growled. "Oh, I am sure you will. You will try, and try, and try some more. You'll think you can all the way up the bloody hill! Just like Bobby did!" She stood from her throne, her temper lost. "I don't want you to fucking try! I want results! I want to crucify Seras Victoria's body on Big Ben and make her spirit stare at it while the crows pick her apart!"

Pause. Calm yourself Annabelle. Remorse and benevolence. She breathed deeply, centering herself. "This woman abandoned us. She murdered one of our own. And more than that, she is an abomination against the balance of life and death, Reece told me himself. She was mauled and shot, and yet held enough energy to smash in a Reaper's head. A Reaper that loved her, and tended to her needs when she was a child."

Annabelle took her seat again. "Thrice now Seras Victoria has betrayed us, each way more penetrating than the last. For the sake of Bobby's memory, and for the cause of our very existence, end the suffering that she has caused us for so long. You may be dismissed."

The Reapers exited the throne room silently, leaving Annabelle to her thoughts. They all returned to the bar, and Oni pulled out a large bottle of vodka. He poured out a glass for himself and Richard; Megan didn't care for Russian alcohol.

"You're going to try to save her," Rocky said accusingly. "Aren't you?"

Richard swirled his glass mindlessly. "We're bringing her head back to HQ, just like Composer King ordered."

"Don't lie to me," Rocky spat back. "You're going to get yourselves killed doing this; you know that? Just like Bobby…"

"Rock," Megan said. "No one is going to die."

"Yes," Rocky cut in. There was acid in his voice. "Someone is going to die." He spun around and sped out the door into the maze.

"Yeesh," Oni said, gurgling some vodka. "Feeling melodramatic today Bamm-Bamm?"

"Lay off, Malcolm," Richard groaned.

"Ooh, full names today! Guess nobody's in a good mood." He grinned like a cat and shot down two more glasses. "So Richy, what'd the kid say? We got a location?"

"No, he didn't say much. Probably didn't trust us all that much after you two's little stunt."

Megan protested. "The hell did I do? I worked my part of the plan perfectly that little shit is the one who started blowing things up and calling out my location to every Player in the UG. He was more than ready for a fight." Richard looked over to Oni. He shrugged.

"I just wanted to punch things. Now come on, did he say ANYTHING that could help us?"

"Well…" Richard thought back to their brief exchange on the roof. "He was familiar enough with Composers and how the UG works."

"He is a Living Player," Megan added. "He would have to know about the system, only a Composer could give him that kind of power. Players don't keep their pins after they win. And we can assume that the blonde is another Living Player, or maybe even a Reaper."

"So our girl has top of the line bodyguards until we find her," Oni finished. "That's good news."

"It also means that there's a Composer out there who wants Seras back in the UG."

"Hmm…" Richard considered this. "Composers don't really communicate with each other, not that I've ever seen. Ol' Georgie certainly never talked to the other branches."

"Yeah," Megan said. "The only thing we have that could be considered communication would be the Games. Players were talking to each other, the record of all the Games in the public files. I've never looked myself, but there could be some international records that Composers can evaluate for ideas. Maybe someone liked the Games Seras made and wanted her to keep making them?"

"That's a bit of a stretch," Oni laughed.

Megan and Richard frowned at him. "Well, do you have any better suggestions?"

"Nope." He burped. "And I don't intend to make any because I don't care. Someone out there has Seras' best interests at heart; that's good enough for me. If you two want to know the whos and whys, you can ask the kids yourself when we find them again, which we will. Until then, we lay low. Stay out of Anny's focus for a little while, let the attention fall somewhere else."

"Anny?" Richard asked, a little surprised. "You're worried about her?"

"She is the one that put out the hit," Oni pointed out. "And with her Composer power she outclasses the three of us."

"Please, she's unstable. Has been for years. Most of the time she's so busy looking at her Games that she doesn't even notice us. Unless we're in the wrong place, messing with her Game."

"Yeah," Megan agreed. "She's been different ever since she became Composer. More aggressive, less like the little girl that won her Game and joined the Reapers. It's like she's trying to fill shoes that reach up to her thighs, just pushing harder and harder to make them fit. I feel bad for her."

"Little Orphan Anny is out of her league, I agree," Oni said, tapping his glass. "But that's what makes her dangerous to Seras. She's going to try to prove herself, to the Higher Ups and us."

"Hmm," Richard's demeanor lowered. "That's probably why she sent Bobby out to kill Seras. Self-defense or not, she did leave. And her being a…"

"Don't you say it." Oni glared at Richard. "Don't you listen to that spiel Anny gave us. Our little girl was not, is not, and will never be a traitor. And this 'abomination between life and death' shit is probably somehow related."

"Yeah," Megan said firmly. "You can't actually think Seras would have left us on purpose!"

"I don't know," he admitted. "I don't know what to think. If she left on her own, she'd be a traitor, but if someone dethroned her…"

"Well, I know exactly what to think." Oni put his glass down. "I think Seras was taken off the throne, some time when she was vulnerable, by an undead. One with higher thinking that could plan and control their power. A vampire or something."

"Umm, Oni are you alright up there?" Megan waved in front of his eyes. "Vampires are a myth."

"So are we," Oni said, very sane. "Vampires are real and are perfectly capable of doing something like this. Just ask Richard or Mr. Nayake. They've seen some. Even killed a few, I heard."

Megan turned to Richard. He confirmed this. "A little over a century ago there was a tiny outbreak. Nothing major, the living handled most of them. Ol' Georgie sent me out to mop up a couple stragglers, two children, and a woman. They don't have a lot of power over the dead, since we don't have blood, but Seras was still alive when she was Composer. That would make her vulnerable."

"I don't believe this…"

"We'll have to confirm it with Mr. Nayake once he returns," Richard continued. "But the possibility is there. Seras could have been dethroned and transformed into a vampire."


	8. Views of others

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a Tumblr. If you are interested in seeing updates on the story or even small previews. Search Inusoragirl on Tumblr. I also post ideas me and my co-writer think up of!

**Chapter 8: Views of Others**

* * *

Neku and Joshua were led to their new temporary quarters by a platoon of fully armed soldiers. It was practically barren save a single bunk bed; not even a window to liven up the décor. Neku noticed some discolorations on the walls, and heavy scratching on the floor. He guessed other soldiers had lived here. Maybe the ones leading them.  
"Thank you, boys, we can take it from here," Joshua announced cheerily, closing the door between them and the soldiers. He turned back to Neku. "Dibs on the bottom bunk!"

"Whoever calls the bottom?" Joshua seemed to ignore him and plopped down on the bed. He flipped open his phone and typed in a few commands. "Well, whatever," Neku continued. "That was a pretty slick story you gave-"

"Shush dear," Joshua interrupted. He was scanning the room with the camera of his phone.

"What?"

"Not another word," Joshua ordered. Neku scowled, but remained silent. Joshua continued waving his phone over the walls, inputting a few codes every now and then. After a while, he closed his phone and put it in his lap.

"Alright," he said, his face growing more serious. "Cameras and bugs are disabled. What did the Reapers tell you?" A portal opened behind Neku, and a folding chair slid out for his convenience.

Neku accepted the seat. "Well, besides trying to bludgeon me with a gorilla, one of them didn't seem too bad. He caught me while I was trying to escape and flew me away from the other two."

"Yes yes, I saw the Noise in the footage," Joshua waved his hand impatiently. "We don't have time for stories Neku, just stick with information that I can use."

Hmm, impatient, Neku thought. That's not totally unusual, but we aren't on a time limit like in the Game. He doesn't get like this in the RG that often. "At least, three of the Reapers are on Seras' side. They don't have much of a plan, but they aren't trying to kill her."

"Don't say her name," Joshua said, now speaking Japanese. "We should stick with our native language when we talk about this too. That way no one can eavesdrop. Did you get any names?"

"Oni and Megan," Neku answered, following Joshua's example. "The one that carried me away didn't give his own. Why all the secrecy?"

"This Hellsing is using a vampire as her personal Rambo, and she's training another. If she gets wind that one of her peons is the most powerful person in all of London, we don't know what she might do with her."

"I think she already believes that the vampire is the most powerful person in London," Neku countered.

"With limitations," Joshua pointed out. "She has to keep her vampire a secret from everyone outside her government, and its power is severely limited in the daylight. A Composer would grant her a much greater advantage."

"And now we work for her," Neku said sarcastically.

"For now," Joshua said. "And as far as Hellsing knows, I'm no more than a form of transportation. And you're a wanted criminal, so she can't send you into the city to do dirty work."

"So why hire us? If she only knows that much, we aren't much of an asset to her."

"I'm not sure. It might have something to do with that meeting they went to while we were here. I overheard the captain mention that it was with the queen while we were waiting for you."

"Hmm," Neku pondered. "Well, we're here. Why don't we look into it?"

Joshua smiled. "Care to go for an evening walk before bed, my friend?" He was speaking in English again.

"Heh," Neku laughed. "Could be nice. But I don't want you bumming around with me."

"Oh, I wouldn't want to impose!" The two stood and exited the room. The hallway was dark and empty.

"Don't be too long," Joshua advised. "You had a long day, wouldn't want to wake up drowsy tomorrow." Don't draw attention to yourself, Neku interpreted.

"Got it." Neku fiddled with his headphones and walked one direction down the hall. Joshua went the opposite direction.

* * *

Damn, Neku thought as he traversed the darkened halls of Hellsing Manor. This place even looks like a vampire's lair. He turned a corner and met a pair of Wild Goose soldiers. Behind them, there was a sizable hole in the wall, and a set of stairs leading deep beneath the compound. There were voices echoing up from the depths. Neku strained to make out what they were saying.

"No matter how many times we kill them, they keep coming back." It was the butler's voice, Neku was just able to identify it.

"Hey kid," one of the guards said. He waved his rifle at Neku. "Move along, you got no business here." Neku could hear the vampire speaking now, just barely inaudible behind the guard. Something about new members.

"What's the problem," Neku asked, raising his arms in mild annoyance. "Is there a rule against standing here?"

"Yes," the guard retorted.

"Oh." That admittedly stumped him. "My bad, guys. Didn't know. I'll move on." Neku walked away, letting the guards watch him for a while until he turned a corner. He could only teleport into places he could see, but there were enough obstacles to obscure his entrance. Onto a hanging light, under a table, behind a plant, and then straight through the hole onto the stairway, and neither guard noticed a thing. Neku couldn't help but pat himself on the back for his badass stealth.

Neku didn't dare go down the steps too far, for fear of the vampire smelling him or something, and he could hear them fairly well from halfway down. He turned down the volume of his headphones just to be sure.

The Butler, Walter, Neku finally remembered, was still talking. "-would you of all people do something so out of character?" Partway through the conversation. Neku hoped he hadn't missed anything crucial.

"It was her decision. She chose her own path." The vampire now. Big Bad Batty. Neku clearly remembered his name was Alucard, but he just liked Batty more. Who was "she" though? "What about her family?"

"She doesn't have any. She's an orphan."

"I figured." Neku thought he heard Batty chuckle at that. Probably a trick of the echo. "She's more interesting than she looks. Her superiors and coworkers were being turned into ghouls right and left in her town of death. A vampire was trying to rape and kill her. It was a hell like the bottom of a witch's cauldron. And what did she do? What did she choose? Giving up is what kills people." Neku heard a single light clap. "Those who refuse to give up are entitled to trample upon humanity."

That time there was definitely a chuckle. "Now all she needs to do is drink blood, right?"

"She'll drink," Alucard said with confidence. "She'll definitely drink."

 _Seras_ , Neku realized. _Oh crap, they're talking about Seras._ He decided it was time to get very far away from Alucard and Walter. He silently trailed back up the stairs and retraced his teleportations back around the corner, and then kept walking. He turned his music up very loud.

* * *

Joshua had made himself invisible to the living from the instant he entered their room, and still was as he walked the halls of Hellsing Manor. Every so often he would come across a lazing soldier or two, but even if they were on duty, they couldn't perceive him. He still had to be mindful of the vampires, though; this was their time to roam, and he was perfectly visible as far as they were concerned. It really was a shame Neku hadn't chosen to join the Reaper Game. If he had this sort of work would be so much easier.

He heard coughing in the room next to him. It sounded rather painful. Joshua peered around the corner to make sure everything was alright, and there was Seras coughing up hot soup. An entire spread of fine meats and fancy dishes was laid before her, illuminated by the moonlight. Much of it looked delicious. Joshua imagined she must have been dying to eat food from her life to have so much prepared. None of it was viable, of course. Her body rejected everything, except…

A packet of donated blood landed on the table before her. Seras' eyes turned red instantly. "Why don't you drink blood?" Integra stepped out from the shadows, smoking a fat cigar. "You're not human anymore. You're a vampire, Seras."

Seras was stammering, nervous, probably still choking on the soup. Joshua crept closer to the shadows. His nose wrinkled and his face straightened. An unbloodied vampire was rare, but that's what he needed right now. It would make her much easier to return to the Reapers, and Hellsing was tempting her. A blood pack wasn't awful, though, dead blood isn't that big of a deal.

Integra grabbed a knife from the table and slit it across the tip of her finger. Seras yelled in surprise, and Joshua recoiled.

"Heh," Integra chuckled. "I cut my finger. I don't want it to get infected. Please, lick it for me."

"But, umm…" Seras was retracting, unsure. But her eyes didn't leave the dripping blood.

"Lick it," Integra said more firmly. "That's an order."

"No no no no no," Joshua cursed under his breath. I can't stop her. The situation is too delicate as it is, and I can't afford to have more enemies right now blocking me from Seras. Don't do it…

She did it, as commanded. Joshua had to turn his eyes; the visage was so obscene. He considered turning around and leaving, before anything got out of hand, but Hellsing was right here. If he was going to get any information out of her, it would be now. So Joshua waited for the slurping sounds to stop. Eventually, they did, and Seras put her bloodied tongue back in her mouth.

"It's genuine, 100 percent pure virgin blood. You feel any better?" Virgin, great, Joshua thought to himself. So if any vampire goes rogue and tries to drink her, she'll just come back as a vampire herself. Seras stuttered a word of thanks, and Integra turned back. "Prepare your gear and standby for action." Joshua's ears perked up. "We've lost contact with our aircraft carrier Eagle off the coast of Wales. It's probably them."

Seras stood to attention. "Y-Yes, sir!" She turned to leave the room, and caught a glimpse of Joshua looking at her. He backed into the wall and vanished.

The portal closed behind him, so Joshua could be sure he was alone. The Stygian blackness around him swirled and churned like the oceans of nothingness before the universe came to be. He did not open a new portal, at first, choosing instead to float in the emptiness alone for a time.

"Hmm," Joshua thought aloud. "Meetings with the queen, loss of contact with warships, 'them?' The Higher Ups certainly have put me in a pickle." He leaned back in the air and looked in his phone. Newspaper articles, documentaries, live footage. An overwhelming amount of red.

"I think we've been recruited into a war."

* * *

There was a chill in the air, and an iciness to the moon's blank stare. Seras' breath froze as it leapt from her lips, even though she herself didn't feel the cold. She was cleaning her disassembled rifle, each part greasy and lightly scratched from use. Firearm maintenance was one of the only things Seras carried over from her past life to this one. It was tedious, dull, and time-consuming, but she hardly complained. It couldn't make her feel more dead.

The taste of Integra's blood lingered in her palette. She had expected it to be like the blood from a steak, fatty and tinged with iron, but it wasn't. Human blood was leaner, saltier. It was smoked rather than grilled, tangy and bitter in just the right way. Seras was infatuated with its taste, and disgusted with herself for it. The warmth of it had spread all over her body, thin but potent. Her veins twitched lightly and sporadically, the tease of blood bringing little bits of life to her flesh. Seras hadn't simply consumed blood; it was now a very real part of her. A piece of Integra's very soul, swimming through her body like a demented eel. It gave Seras power; she could tell instantly. The same intoxicating power that her master flaunted. Suddenly she realized she wanted more; she wanted the power that blood gave her. Seras had a taste of immortality, contained in little bags of meat and bone, free for her to drink if she really wanted. All it would take… All it would take…

"Uhh… You alright there Seras?" Neku was standing in the doorway, his hands in his pockets. He was watching her very carefully. Seras spun to see him, and then noticed the splatter of drool running down her uniform.

"Shit!" She wiped her face with the cloth she'd been cleaning her gun with. Now there was oil all over her mouth. Seras started spitting up as her body rejected it on two separate levels.

Neku chuckled a bit at her. "Heh, you know, for a badass vampire chick you are a bit of a ditz." He pulled out a crumbled paper napkin from his pocket and offered it to her. She snatched it and rubbed the bitter goo from her face.

"You carry around napkins?" Seras was still coughing, but had improved. She couldn't taste Integra's blood anymore.

"Force of habit," Neku shrugged and sat beside her. "I had a couple ditzy friends back in Shibuya, so I collected napkins for when they needed it."

"Hmm." Seras went back to cleaning her rifle. Neither side said anything for a minute.

"So," Neku eventually continued. "You wanna tell me about your headlights?"

She froze and glared at him. "Excuse me?"

Neku gestured to her face. "Your eyes. They were bright red."

"O-oh." Seras relaxed a little. She realized that she'd been spending too much time with the Wild Geese. "That. That was… um…"

Just then Seras noticed Neku was doing something with his hands. He'd reached up to his head and was fiddling with some buttons on his headphones. Than Neku pulled them off his head and let them hang on his neck.

"You," Seras glared at the exposed sides of his head in confusion. "Have earrings."

"Huh?" Neku touched his earlobes. There were two little metal studs in each one, glinting in the moonlight. "Oh yeah, I forgot about those."

"Do you never take that thing off your head?!" Seras yelled at him, flinging her rifle's muzzle across the room.

"What?" Neku dodged back out of the muzzle's trajectory. "Of course, I do! It's just with everything that's been going on; they slipped my mind." He pulled one out of his ear and examined it thoughtfully, rubbing it between his fingers. A nostalgic smile lit up his face. "Heh, Shiki…"

"You know," Seras watched Neku play with the jewelry. "You don't smile a lot. It's nice. More genuine than your friend's."

Neku replaced the earring. "Ha, I can tell you most of his smiles are genuine. He really is that happy to play his little games on us."

"Heh, games huh?" Seras chuckled, a little nervous. "So all this business about me being some Composer-god of death-thing is all a game? He is just playing with me right?" Neku looked over at her, more serious. There was sadness in his eye. "It has to be a lie," Seras continued. "I couldn't just forget something like that. It's ridiculous!"

"Yeah, ridiculous," Neku answered. "Ridiculous like forgetting your entire life after you die and being expected to fight to get that life back." Seras' eyes narrowed at hearing his words. He chuckled humorlessly. "Lost memory isn't all that special."

She thought about this. "So… you believe him?"

"I believe that Joshua is a very good liar," Neku said. "That he will not hesitate to manipulate people to reach his goal, no matter what he might have to do. He can be ruthless, violent, scheming, whatever he needs to be. Joshua has done things to me and my friends that I will never forgive him for. But you know what?"

Seras was perplexed, worried, and hanging on Neku's every word. "What?"

"I trust him. If he says you were a Composer and that you need to be one again, I'll trust his word."

"But you just said exactly why he shouldn't be trusted!" Seras retorted. "How he lies and cheats to get what he wants! You can trust that?"

"Yes." It was simple and pointed. "Pain in my ass that he is, Joshua is my friend. His existence makes me a better person, even when we clash." He stood up and walked across the room. When he returned he was carrying the muzzle of Seras' gun. "Especially when we clash."

Seras took the piece and wiped it down. "So that's it then? I'm a Composer? I play with dead children and send them to Hell so a couple can come back to life?"

"No. You're a vampire that doesn't drink blood."

"What?! How did you-"

"You're a woman who doesn't give into death," Neku continued. "You're stronger than a lot of people. You could use that, abuse it to get stronger. If you want, you can trample over those weaker than you without even noticing. Rule with an iron fist, crush the opposition, destroy everything when you want to start over. Send dead children to Hell.

"Personally, though," Neku finished, walking to the door. "I don't think that sort of attitude suits people like us. People who fight Death itself are better off embracing life than shunning it." And with that, he left.

* * *

"That is all, Alucard. You are dismissed."

"Yes, my Master." Alucard turned into the dark and strode out into the hall. Integra pulled the cigar from her mouth and leaned back in her chair, contemplating the days to come. An aircraft carrier captured, more and more vampires rising from the woodworks to knock at Hellsing's door, and the dead crawling out of their graves to blow up national landmarks and be a nuisance. The paperwork alone was liable to give her a hernia by the end of the month, not to mention the hours-long meetings she would inevitably have to have with the Queen and Iscariot about the existence of an afterlife on Earth. That would be a really tough one.

"Care for some tea, Madam Hellsing?" Integra looked toward the door, surprised to hear words like that come from someone other than Walter. There was Joshua, a steaming tea kettle and two china cups in hand. This boy had a strangely acute sense of timing.

"If I'd wanted tea I would have sent my butler for it Kiryu. I did not summon you."

"It wasn't about desire or summoning, Madam. I'd simply hoped to mend any residual feelings of hostility between our parties." Joshua smiled innocently. Integra narrowed her eyes at the devious child.

With a tired sigh, she waved him in. "What are we drinking?"

"Big Red Robe. It's oolong, a white tea." He poured into the two cups and passed one to Integra.

"I don't recall owning that," Integra commented, looking down at the contents of the cup.

"I stepped out and got it myself," Joshua said, sipping his tea. Of course, she wouldn't taste it until he had some first, in case he'd poisoned the drink.

Integra tested the beverage. She didn't seem to taste it, but simply put it down on her desk. "You know, your very existence could be considered heresy towards almost every religion in the world. Including mine."

"Mm," Joshua hummed through his tea. "And I'm sure your vampire henchman fits in perfectly with the message of Jesus Christ."

"I can pass them off as demon's; souls cursed by their own greed in life and condemned to eternal death. What do I say about you and your Reapers?"

"I'd suggest Limbo," Joshua said in a joking tone. "Say we're the dead caught between Heaven and Hell; that should, at least, satisfy the Catholic Church. They eat up all that Dante stuff." Joshua smiled and took another sip of tea. "What happened to your finger?"

Integra didn't even look down at her bandaged finger. "A little paper cut."

"Hmm," Joshua resisted the urge to chuckle at her lie. She was clearly better at reading other people's lies than making her own. "I hope you'll be more careful in the future Miss Hellsing. A drip of blood could be very dangerous in a place like this."

"I have complete control over my vampires, if that's what you're insinuating," Integra said firmly.

"A word of caution, nothing more," Joshua assured. He took another sip from his tea. "May I make an observation?"

Integra stirred her tea mindlessly. "If you must."

"You've accomplished a great deal in your youth, Sir Hellsing."

"Hmm?"

"Two vampires, a small army, your own government organization. So much for a woman in her twenties. It's admirable, to be sure." Joshua stopped to refill his tea. Integra took a second sip from her cup. Her face was stony.

"I cannot be praised for these things," she said. "I didn't create Hellsing, or capture Alucard. Seras was his doing, not mine. And that army is no more than a band of mercenaries I pay twice a month."

Joshua chuckled. "I didn't think you did. Like I said, you're young. But your face is old, you've endured a great deal of stress. The kind of stress that comes with the sudden onset of power."

"And what?" Integra said with a familiar annoyance. "You, in your ancient wisdom, doubt my ability to use my authority?"

"Oh hardly," Joshua quickly corrected. "I can tell you're handling it extraordinarily well. I had much more trouble adapting to my own power."

Integra cocked an eyebrow. "You're lying."

"Heheh, nope. Being a leader is difficult when you're young. I was insecure about my choices, what was right or wrong. I had trouble controlling my emotions, or letting my emotions control me. I didn't know which would be better at what times."

"It sounds like you were truly incompetent," Integra said with a smile. Joshua returned the smile.

"Everybody is incompetent at one point or another. It's that lack of confidence that tells us we have to work on ourselves. As long as you follow a single step, you can always grow beyond it."

"Alright, Kiryu, and what is that?"

"Why Sir Integra, you need to have earned your authority." She silently sipped her tea. "I worked for decades to get where I am now. Dotted my i's and crossed my t's. I did the jobs I was assigned, and eventually, I was rewarded with a great deal of power and authority. Kings and queens struggle to prove themselves for a lifetime, and very few of them really earn what they were given. So they start wars and over-punish criminals to show their subjects just how worthy they are. They get special forces to enforce their authority. And that show of power makes them feel good."

"What's your point boy?" Integra said with an edge in her voice.

"No point Miss," Joshua said, rethinking his plan. "Simply making conversation."

Integra digested this. "Hmph, well perhaps a change in topic would be necessary. Perhaps your boy's incident at the London Eye?"

"Haha, oh yes that. I must again apologize for Neku, he's effective but hardly subtle."

"Oh I'm familiar," Integra chuckled. "We have some recorded news feed I could show you of Alucard that makes the London Eye seem tame."

"I might have to look for those later," Joshua laughed. "We certainly have our hands full, don't we?"

"Quite," Integra agreed. "The two are reckless, and they stick out like sore thumbs."

"But they're always ready for a fight," Joshua added. "Very important for our purposes."

"And what exactly do you think my purpose for Alucard is?"

"Same that mine is for Neku: to kill the things that go bump in the night."

When Neku eventually returned to his room, he found Joshua lying on the bottom bunk making fake snoring noises.

"Do you even sleep?" Neku asked with genuine curiosity.

Joshua smiled a Cheshire grin and winked. "You hear any juicy gossip out there?"

"Hmph. Not much that you can use." He looked around the barren room. "Is there a dresser or a closet or something? Spare clothes I can change into?"

"'Fraid not dear," Joshua said mischievously. "I suppose you'll just have to sleep in your underwear."

"Fuck off, I'll stick with what I'm wearing." Neku flipped the lights off and jumped up on the top bunk.

"Really, your two-day old rags? That can't be hygienic Neku." Joshua's giggling shook Neku's bunk. "It's just the two of us, don't be a baby. I promise I won't take pictures of you on my phone again."

"Ugh, I swear I take you clothes shopping with us one time! You understand that you have serious boundary problems, right?"

"Oh don't be so embarrassed," Joshua chided. "Shiki sure didn't mind."

There was a pause, followed by a low burning light coming from Neku's bunk. He leaned over the side, the flame in his hand casting a shadow over his eyes. He spoke in a threatening monotone. "Joshua, did you take pictures of Shiki while she was changing?"

"What? No no no no, never!" Joshua shouted, aghast. "I wouldn't do that!"

"… Good." The flame extinguished and Neku rolled back into bed.

"I sent her pictures of you changing."

There was an audible intake of air above Joshua. Afterward, the silence lasted long enough for him to begin to worry about Neku's health, but eventually the air came rushing back out in a tired sigh.

"All things considered, you could have done worse. I can live with that. Also, it explains why she couldn't look me in the eye without blushing for a couple days."

"Haha, yeah that was fun… Sorry about this by the way." Neku braced himself, expecting to fall through another portal or be bombarded by something, but nothing happened. Joshua sat up and leaned against the wall beside their bed, holding his knees subconsciously. "I know I shouldn't have forced you into this situation without asking. Taking you away from your home and your friends. I was out of line, I get that."

"Our friends."

Joshua looked up through the crack between the wall and Neku's bunk. There was one of Neku's light blue eyes, lightly covered by his dangling orange hair, looking down on him. "Huh?"

"They're our friends Joshua, not just mine." Neku smiled.

"Uh, well yeah but that's not really the point."

"Yeah, actually it is," Neku said. "You aren't forcing me to do anything. If I wanted to go home, I would have told you to send me home. You're my friend, you blonde jackass, and I'm here to help you. If you're in an apologizing mood, though, I can think of a list of things you could start with." He reached down and flicked Joshua in the ear. "Besides, I think Seras could use our help. I heard some heavy stuff today, and I don't think she can afford to be left alone with 'bloodsuckers' like you or the crazy bastards here."

Joshua twitched with an uncontrolled smile. "Really, a vampire pun? A smile? Physical contact? When did you get all warm and caring?"

He flicked him again. "I'm trying to make you cheer up idiot. And I can be warm, what the hell do you know?"

Joshua chuckled a genuine chuckle. "Alright, alright. I'm just saying sorry, there's no need to patronize me." He pushed Neku's hand away from him.

"Okay man, apology accepted. Now shut up and let me sleep, this isn't a slumber party." Neku rolled over and squeezed his pillow to his head.

"Yeah," Joshua said quietly. "Good night." Neku said nothing, but before long Joshua could hear light snoring coming from him. He readjusted himself so he was sitting on his pillow and flipped open his phone. Joshua's face lit up with a dim red glow as he studied the few direct records he could find. It was all very gritty and amorphous, not a lot to go off of. He felt some regret for not telling Neku, but it wouldn't do much good. There was no way for him to prepare for something like this, it would be better to not let him dwell on the knowledge. Joshua felt unsure if Neku could handle the war when it came, and he knew it was inevitable at this point. There was no going back, not if he was going to get Seras back on the Composer throne. He and Neku would just have to deal with it. A pit of fear set in Joshua's stomach.

Only 24 hours left until the invasion.

There was a lot of work to be done by then.

"Fuck."

* * *

Very few things in this world are universal to every culture. Even the most ancient civilization could understand a smile or a laugh. Two lovers may not speak the same language, but the adoration in their eyes is clear in its meaning. Every creature on this earth understands that putting your arms in front of your face is defensive. The Wild Geese had been everywhere, and they were familiar with the universals in this world.

And they knew that the greatest universal was bacon. If a grand new being descended from the heavens to grace them with their power, the Wild Geese would present them with bacon. Or at least, that's what they did with Joshua and Neku. By the time breakfast was finished, Neku was ill with the bacon-burps.

"Man, they cook their bacon soft," Neku sputtered sickly. "Who makes chewy bacon?"

"Must be a European thing," Joshua suggested. "We undercook fish, they undercook pork."

"That's stupid."

"That's your opinion. I kind of liked it. Crispy bacon always tasted burnt to me. Just like toast, I never understood toast."

"What's to understand? It's crispy bread that you put eggs on. Not that complicated."

"No, it's burnt bread that you cover up and falls apart all over your lap."

"Did you grow up in a time when cooking food correctly didn't exist?"

Joshua laughed. "Yeah, it was the twentieth century. The height of poor electronics that always chars your food."

"Man whatever," Neku groaned, cradling his gurgling stomach. "You don't know the joys of an American-style grilled cheese sandwich."

"And you've never enjoyed a properly cooked plate of French toast. That's the kind of toast that I can get behind!"

"I always preferred a warm cinnamon pancake with a side of Charlotte myself." The two turned to meet the stereotyped accent known as the commander of the Wild Geese.

"Um, is that a kind of wine?" Neku inquired.

"Nope!" Bernadotte let out a hearty laugh and slapped Neku on the back. He nearly chucked partially digested bacon all over the jolly Frenchman.

Joshua smiled at the captain's perverted joke. "Ah Pip, I was wondering when you might arrive to pick up Neku."

"What?" Neku looked up.

"Oh, yes I forget to mention. As part of my and Integra's agreement, you're required to remain under constant supervision while I'm away. I have business to attend to in the city, so the good captain here was kind enough to offer his babysitting services." Neku stared at Joshua disapprovingly, but Joshua mockingly winked and stuck out his tongue. A portal opened up behind him and he turned to go through.

"Take good care of my precious baby, captain!" Joshua called mimicking an overbearing mother. "He has his naptime at 3:00 precisely, and if he starts crying I left his teddy in his crib. Be good dear!" Neku flipped him off as he waved and walked through the closing portal. Bernadotte laughed quietly to himself and lit a cigarette.

"So," he said with a puff of smoke. "Is he gay?"

"No one can tell," Neku said. "That's the impression he gives off, but I swear girls fall all over him."

"Heh, sounds like my kind of guy," Bernadotte remarked, impressed. "So, we have some time to kill. Want to learn how to shoot a gun? You strike me as a revolver sort of man."

Neku raised an eyebrow. "Handguns are illegal in my country."

Bernadotte smiled deviously. "They are in this country too! But you're in a militia now, you get all the handguns and explosives you could want here." He turned and beckoned Neku to follow. "Come on, I'll get you measured for an ammo belt."

* * *

Joshua stood in the abyssal space between portals, thinking for a time. He checked the hour on his phone; if the London Reaper Game followed a similar schedule to his, the Players wouldn't come to for another hour or two. That meant the Reapers likely hadn't left HQ, or if they had, they could be anywhere in the city.

"Well," Joshua said aloud to himself. "Guess I'm doing this the hard way." He typed a long command code into his phone. A portal opened up to his left. A moment later, another opened right beside the first. Then another opened, and another. Soon Joshua was surrounded by portals, 537 of them all leading to random locations spread throughout London. He faced the one nearest to him and leaned into it.

Joshua's face poked out into open air. He was in a market with a few pedestrians strolling about with sleep lingering in their eyes.

"Hello?" Joshua called. There was no response, which meant no dead people. A jogger passed through the open portal mistakenly and turned back. He felt like he'd passed something, but could not perceive Joshua or the portal. He shrugged and kept running.

Joshua pulled his head back through the portal, and with a pinch of his fingers it closed. Somewhere another portal opened in a new location, but he wouldn't find that one for a while yet. Unfazed, he moved on to the next portal.

"Hello?" he called again. A squirrel was digging through a dumpster in a back alley, chewing on yesterday's chips. He looked up and down the alley, and saw a morning mugging. Some guy was pulling his wallet out at the point of a gun, and Joshua guessed he was on the verge of pissing himself. Joshua shot the assailant down the block with a quick laser and went back through the portal. He giggled to himself and continued into another portal.

This would go on for several hours.

Integra and Walter walked down a dark hallway purposefully.

"They aren't attacking us themselves, but if we draw near, they fire the weapon," Walter said. "It's textbook. They're trying to lure us in."

"But we can't just call it a ghost ship and leave it at that. It's too dark and menacing," Integra pointed out. "For vampires, the sea is the lowest pit of hell. They may be lost in this situation, but so are we. How do we get Alucard and Seras on that floating fortress?" She stopped and turned to her butler. "A large ship?"

"No," Walter said. "It would take too long. We can't count on them to stay put forever." He thought for a moment. "What about a small high-speed craft?"

"No," Integra countered. She felt a pattern begin to emerge. "They have high caliber anti-aircraft and Gatling guns. It's hard to imagine it standing up to a hail of bullets. What about dropping them in from directly above?"

"No. With the anti-aircraft missiles, they have onboard we couldn't even get close, let alone directly above. We could use an airplane with lots of decoy chaff."

"No. Even if we fooled the missiles, they still have their magic bullet."

A childish voice came from above them. "What if it was MAGIC decoy chaff?" Integra and Walter looked up in shock, and found Joshua's head poking out of the ceiling. He smiled guiltily at them. "Sorry, I couldn't help but overhear. Care to fill me in on the situation?"

Integra frowned at the upside-down boy head. "What are you doing here Kiryu?"

Joshua snickered at the most obvious joke he could come up with, and decided to keep it to himself. "London is a really big place. Setting up random portals is the best way for me to search through it all at the moment. I just so happened to come across you two in my wanderings. What are the odds?"

"Suspiciously low," Walter said. Joshua smiled again. "However this does present us with a new option, Sir Integra. Young master Joshua is capable of traveling incredible distances in very little time with his portals. What if we sent Master Alucard through one of them onto the ship?"

"Out of the question," Joshua said instantly. His eyes glazed over and his smile smoothed out.

"It is the best option we have," Integra agreed. She turned to Joshua's head. "If you were given a set of coordinates, could you send Alucard to a specific location within the hour Kiryu?"

"I don't think you heard me," Joshua grinned humorlessly at Integra. "Out. Of the. Question."

"Excuse me?" Integra's eyes narrowed. "Are you going to disobey a direct order Kiryu?"

"You misunderstand, Madam Hellsing," Joshua said innocently. "This is a Dead Hole, made for Reaper Lords and their living or non-living guests. The moment your vampire commando crossed through the boundary, he'd be torn apart by the souls of the dead and never reach his destination."

A sinister laugh came from Integra's shadow, and Alucard reared his head at Joshua. "I will survive," he said.

Joshua's grin widened. "Would you like to test that?" A small portal opened up on the wall beside Alucard, barely large enough to fit his hat through. "Place your hand in the portal, see what happens."

Alucard glanced at the small opening and slid this gloved hand in without hesitation. Within a second his face morphed into a toothy scowl and he tore his arm out of the portal. His hand was a bloody stump.

"See?" Joshua said with an air of satisfaction. "Undead cannot use Dead Holes. It's a stretch to even allow the living."

"Damn," Integra cursed her luck. The one time she could have best used this power. "Then this is impossible!"

"Not quite," Walter said, struck by a new idea. "There is an aircraft that is up to the task."

"Well then, I suppose my presence is no longer necessary. Fair well friends!" And with that Joshua pulled his head up through the ceiling and out of the portal, closing it. He looked down with mild disgust at the hand he had removed from the vampire and tossed it down into the abyss. It would end up somewhere, eventually. Maybe.

"The last thing I need is for that vampire to be here and get in the way of Seras' enthroning. An extended leave of absence in the middle of the ocean will do him just fine." Joshua turned and continued his search through the portals.

* * *

"Ah, c'est parfait!" Bernadotte weighed a five-shot revolver in his hands. "Here you are cadet, try this on for size." He handed the gun over to Neku, who was currently being measured for a newly tailored ammunition belt. The tailor was struggling to find space on his body to fit an adequately sized strap. "Heavier than it looks, no?"

"Yeah…" Neku mumbled, looking at his reflection in the polished metal. The last time he'd held a gun was when he got shot back to life. Neku still wasn't sure how that worked, but he didn't have a lot of good experience with guns. "Is this really necessary?"

"Bien sûr," Bernadotte replied through a puff of smoke. "You may have your fancy magic accessories, but nothing kills a man better than a bullet between the eyes! And most of these bullets are blessed by the church, making them deadly to any vampire shit." He smiled and pulled out his pistol as an example.

"Besides, every man needs his gun."

"Heh, I don't know captain," the tailor said. "I don't think this Jap's ever had much firepower to begin with!" Bernadotte and the tailor laughed dirtily while Neku considered how much force he could put into his knee in the few inches between it and the man's jawline. But then he got a different idea.

"You say what you will," Neku started with a grin. "But if you ever want to replace that filthy rag on your head with some real hair, my 'firepower' can spare some." Bernadotte laughed again as the tailor felt his toupee gingerly.

"Haha, très bien cadet. You'll get along nicely with the other men. Although I have one question." He pulled out his cigarette and looked intensely at Neku. "Does your carpet match your drapes, because if so I must think you've killed any woman you've bedded!" Bernadotte laughed grandly to himself, and Neku and the tailor joined in.

* * *

"Hello?" Joshua said. Another highway. A truck drove right through him, and nobody saw a thing. He pulled his head back through the portal and closed it.

Urgency and disappointment were starting to creep into Joshua's mind. He'd never considered himself an impatient man, he thought he was too old for that. But it had only been a couple hours and already he was starting to panic a little. The Players still weren't out, and he'd been through so many portals at this point the constant relocation was making him sick. So Joshua turned off his flying and let himself fall for a while.

It wasn't for too long, just until Joshua reached what he thought was terminal velocity. Judging speed in the dark was tough, so he overshot it a little. He didn't care too much, Joshua just enjoyed the sensation of falling. He'd decided that it was better than flying: flying meant you had to propel yourself all the time, constantly fighting against every force at once. It was refreshing to just let gravity do its job every once in awhile and take a break from controlling everything.

Joshua laughed at himself. "Old habits die hard," he supposed.

* * *

"Non non, cadet." Bernadotte and Neku were outside at the gun range with the other soldiers, training. "Don't hold both sides of the grip, you'll lose your balance. Hold the bottom with your non-dominant hand as a base, it keeps your aim steady, comprendre? And bend your elbows a bit, you look like the gun is holding you."

Neku made the suggested adjustments. "Better?"

"Oui," Bernadotte nodded. "Now just match the sight with the center of the target and pull the trigger. And don't close one of your eyes, that doesn't help."

Neku did what he said, and he really tried. He lined up the sight, steadied his breath, and spaced out his feet to prepare for the recoil. And then when he squeezed the revolver's trigger, there was a click and nothing happened.

"Hey, kid," one of the soldiers leered at him. "Here's a tip: pull back the hammer." A few men started laughing, and Neku blushed lightly. Bernadotte chuckled beside him.

I shouldn't have let these shits think they could keep me prisoner, Neku thought spitefully. Now they're getting smart. He quickly pulled back the hammer and re-centered his aim. Neku emptied his five shots into the wooden target, gradually gaining some momentum.

"Hmm," Bernadotte examined the shots thoughtfully. "Not bad cadet. All five actually hit the wood." Neku grinned and examined the chunk of metal in his palm, empty and innocuous. Suddenly he started getting ideas.

"Heh, you think that's good kid?" A soldier raised his gun beside Neku. "Watch this." He fired off twelve shots, all of them landing somewhere on the bullseye. He holstered his gun, clearly pleased with himself. "What do you think of that? Pretty cool huh?"

"Yeah," Neku said. He pulled out a bullet from his pocket, briefly tapping it against a pin before loading it into the chamber. "Now you watch this." He went through the steps in his mind and fired the bullet. This one landed a little more centered than the others, but that didn't matter so much to Neku.

The Eggshelled-bullet exploded seconds after it stuck in the wood, sending shrapnel out in a fiery ball. There was a general duck-and-cover as the wooden chips rained down on the shocked troops.

"Merde…" Bernadotte warily watched the spot where his target had been. "Magic exploding bullets. Impressionnant cadet."

"Uh, thanks. I think."

"What, you can learn perfect English in Japan but you didn't bother to learn a single word in French?"

"Well yeah, English is a required course. I'm not sure they even offered French."

Bernadotte sighed. "Pas étonnant que personne ne baise au Japon, il leur manque la langue de l'amour!"

Neku was getting annoyed now. "Watashi no tawagoto no gengo o rikai shite imasen."

"Heh," Bernadotte smiled. "I understood 'shite.' Touché cadet, touché." He laughed again, either ignoring Neku's irritation or completely unaware of it. Neku decided to let it be and moved over to a different target. He reloaded the revolver and made a few shots, then holstered the gun and went back inside. Neku wanted some dinner.

* * *

**Omake time!  
Yeah, we ended up with more portal shenanigans that didn't make it in. So we decided to make fun of it more! Enjoy!**

**Joshua looked at the portals in front of him. Each of them took him to a different parts of London. "This is really a gamble. Then again I already expected it too after opening 537 Portals" He muttered to himself. _Well no use talking to my self-lets see where these take me._ He quickly looked into the first portal he saw.**

**Joshua looked into a portal. "Hello?  
** **"Oh my God Joshua get out get out get out!" Seras spun away and covered her chest in a panic.  
** **Joshua blushed heavily. "Sorry!" He retracted and hurriedly closed the portal. "... Huh. British girls, who knew?"**

**He opens another portal.  
Hello? He sees a cultist sacrificial ceremony.  
Hmm... remember that one for later**  
 ****  
He went to another one to take a look.  
"Hello?" he didn't get a reply, but a saw a man with a with a Brown Top Hat talking to a younger boy with a blue cap.  
"Professah mind helping me with this puzzle?" The young boy asked his mentor.  
The Top hat man nodded and looked at the puzzle carefully quickly solving the answer in his head.  
"Well, Luke I do believe the answer i-"  
He is interrupted by a mysterious voice "The black and white cat would go opposite direction. Even if they tried that same road, the hole that they go through would still change their direction due to the angle of it." The man turned around to see no one. All he saw was his young assistant. "Whats wrong Professah?" The young boy asked while a worried look formed on his face. It's nothing, my boy. I guess I thought I heard something. Now about that puzzle." Joshua closed the portal to leave the duo to their puzzle.

**He then opened another portal to see a woman typing on her keyboard. She was typing furiously while listening to what he assumed to be video game music. "Crap I'm seriously late to post this. Damn it this is why I hate freaking game night because I forget my schedule for posting!" the girl quickly logs onto what seems like a fan site.**   
**Joshua quickly closes the portal leaving the girl to her own devices. "Fan writers probably the busiest and weirdest people I've met in my life" He says to himself.**

**He had opened one last one before he went to the one where he heard Integra voice.**   
**He saw a group of players with Gameboys. Some of the players must have been awake before a daily mission.**   
**"Do you have Mew?" one of the players asked another. He decided to mess with them a bit he remembered this era of Pokemon.**   
**"Try using strength near the truck by the St. Anne I heard ones hiding under there," He said to them. And then left seeing them all extremely happy to get the rare Pokemon. "Huh they were right I guess gamers back then did believe anything."**

**He then looked into the next portal to see what was going on with Integra.**

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always guys Review and leave us feedback! By the way, you are awesome if you guessed who the Top Hat Professor was!


	9. Rocky Funk You Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All I have to say is that you can blame my co-writer Chaos for the chapter name. As always please leave us a comment of what you think. I also have a Tumblr for updates and previews for the story. Just search up Inusoragirl nd you should find me!

 “Ugh.” Normally Joshua wasn’t one to complain, but the tedium of sticking his head in portals for hours on end was getting to him. As it turned out, London was really boring compared to Shibuya. Everyone was dressed blandly, the music was dull, and the people had nothing to do in their lives except make mindless chit-chat. Even the weather was tired and gray. What Joshua would give to be able to play with that girl Larissa again and have a decent conversation.  
  
Look in a portal, nothing, move on. Look in a portal, nothing, move on. Look in a portal, nothing, move on. Look in a portal, drown for a second, move on. Look in a portal, steal a   
towel, move on. Look in a portal, see a guy with black wings eating a sub sandwich, move on.  
  
Wait what?  
  
Joshua looked back through the portal. Sure enough, right smack in front of his face were two big black wings sprouting out of a tank top and a very shocked looking tiny man with a sandwich hanging out of his jaw. Joshua’s luck spread itself all over his face in a toothy grin.  
  
“Helloooo,” he sang. “Those are some very nice wings you have there.” He started pulling himself out of the portal towards the Reaper, letting his arms dangle as he crawled over the countertop his portal had been hovering above. His eyes narrowed seductively at the Reaper. “Why don’t you and I have a nice chat about a woman named Seras Victoria.”  
  
Rocky felt a cacophony of emotions at that moment, one of the primary ones being a sense of creepiness from the kid’s stare. There was also confusion, annoyance, some lingering attraction to the cashier girl who was giving him a worried look, hunger, and finally understanding when he heard the name, Victoria.  
  
“You’re one of the foreigners working for Seras,” Rocky said coldly, putting down his lunch. Joshua perceived his subtle switch from the Real Ground into the UG. Now they were in   
private, which was perfect for him.  
  
“Heh, sure. You can say that I guess.” Joshua stepped out of the portal and floated over the counter. Rocky stood and hovered up to Joshua’s level. Joshua noted the twitching pulsations in his wings, as though they were having muscle spasms. Odd.  
“She erased my friend,” Rocky hissed. Joshua smiled coolly: this would be easier than he’d anticipated.  
  
Joshua leaned forward real close until his face was nearly touching Rocky’s. He whispered something very quietly, just barely audible.   
“Your friend was weak,” he taunted him with a nasty sneer.  
Suddenly Joshua’s vision went black as something grabbed his face, and he felt Rocky throw several punches into his abdomen. Then before he could react Joshua was crashing into a wall and fell onto the sidewalk.  
  
Across the street he could see Rocky, and realized why his wings looked so odd before: they weren’t Reaper wings. His wings were obscured behind to two black appendages that looked like wings at first, but had now morphed into large muscular arms that were swaying behind his back. Something was squirming under Rocky’s flesh, moving around his body just under the skin. Rocky himself was enraged, breathing a dense mist and curling his fists.  
Joshua picked himself off the ground and pulled out his phone, smiling. “Don’t you die on me,” he said. “It’s been ages since I’ve had a good fight with a Reaper.”  
  
Rocky kicked off the ground and charged at Joshua, his four fists clenched and ready. The black fists on his back clearly weren’t bound neatly to his frame, because when Rocky punched right it was able to punch left despite the twist in his body, and Joshua got hit by it. Left open, Joshua took another pummeling until a fifth hand grabbed his leg and tossed him into the air like a rag. Rocky flew after him.  
  
Unfazed, Joshua typed a command into his phone and brought down a volley of laser fire. Rocky was able to dodge most of them, but got clipped by one and had a chunk of his shoulder blown off. A sixth appendage grew out of the hole and corrected his flight pattern, and he was back in close range within an instant. He was incredibly fast, Joshua had to admit.  
  
This time, Joshua was able to weave through Rocky’s attacks despite his steadily increasing number of fists. He deftly inputs another command into his phone, and a portal opened up above the two. In a fluid motion, Joshua kicked off of Rocky with both of his feet and sailed away as a truck fell on the Reaper. He and the truck fell several meters, and then stopped in midair. The truck tipped off of him and Rocky flew after Joshua’s falling body.  
  
Joshua fired another volley of lasers, this time, sure Rocky couldn’t dodge them. But then one of the appendages stretched out from Rocky’s body and stuck into a nearby building, yanking Rocky out of the way. He landed on the wall with a stony crunch and continued his manic charge.  
“Oh,” Joshua said stupidly as Rocky bashed into him head-first. Reapers in London were way more aggressive than in Shibuya. He skidded down the concrete and hit his head on a mailbox with a loud clang. Rocky stomped up to him and grabbed him by the collar.  
  
“Seras,” he growled. “Tell me where she is and I’ll consider not killing you.”  
“Huh.” Joshua looked down at the Reaper and smirked. He let his cell phone drop from his palm onto the ground. “I guess I get to try this now.” Joshua’s fist cracked across Rocky’s face and the two went soaring in opposite directions. Joshua glided onto his feet and gently massaged his torn knuckles as Rocky bounced helplessly down the road. Bits and pieces of his face splattered on the road and walls between them.  
  
Joshua picked his phone off the ground and placed it in his pocket. He chuckled a bit to himself. “Shame,” he said. “I’d hoped to make a grander show.” Someone made an impressed whistle beside him, and was accompanied by the telltale sound of 90’s hip-hop.   
Two outlandish collages of color strode out of an alley just behind Joshua. The source of the hip-hop was a very white teenage boy with a bright yellow sideways hat and a boom box resting on his shoulder. He had a big bull-like nose ring and a large fury pimp coat over his bare chest, and purple cargo pants with various mix tapes and CDs weighing down the pockets. The one who whistled was a girl with giant light green pigtails and shirts so layered and torn that a normal person would think she’d been stealing clothes from tiger-attack victims and tie-dyeing all of them. Her skirt was plaid, and that’s about it. She was rolling forward on a pair of hot pink roller blades and mindlessly spinning a yoyo.  
  
“Not too shabby friend,” the girl said. She gave Joshua a feminine wink.  
“’Not too shabby?!’” the boy copied. “That was fucking sick bro!”  
Joshua hesitated for a moment before responding. “Thanks. He wasn’t too tough.”  
  
The girl teetered on her wheels and palmed the yoyo. “Heh, you haven’t fought Big Rock before, have you? He ain’t done with you.”  
The three looked down the road at the Reaper’s body. There must have been a dozen various black, wormy limbs pushing Rocky off the ground. He looked up, his eyes livid and uncontrolled. A large section of his face had been blown off by Joshua’s punch, leaving only bone from the bottom of the left side of his jaw to where he used to have an ear. Black tendrils were wriggling out of the wound and forming a kind of oily mane. Through his teeth, Joshua saw a single glowing white eye staring at him, completely blank of intent but entirely aware of his presence.  
  
“He’s got a Noise inside his body,” Joshua realized.  
“Yup,” the girl said. The boy was switching out the track in his boom box and rifling his many pockets for a new one. “Real biter, that one. Keeps Rock alive no matter how bad we beat him, and it ain’t got a stable form. The thing can be whatever it wants outside his body.”  
“And yet it’s always one ugly motherfucker,” the boy added, examining a CD. Unsatisfied, he kept searching.  
  
“No reason to worry, though,” the girl said, spinning her yoyo around her finger. “B-rad and I are always happy to lend a hand to our fellow Player.”  
“And lay a serious beat down on them nasty-ass Reapers,” Brad said with a wily grin, finally settling on a track. He set it in the boom box and turned the volume up to max. When the beat started up Joshua immediately felt his energy spike. His torn knuckles healed themselves and suddenly it was like the fight before never happened.  
“Oooooh,” the girl moaned. “Nice choice B. Digging the bass.”  
“I aim to please.”  
  
The girl rolled forward toward Rocky. She spun around and addressed Joshua. “Name’s Amy by the way.”  
Joshua smiled. “Joshua. You know I have a couple friends that I think would really get along with you two.”  
“Maybe another time Josh. Right now, you think you’re up for another round with Big Bad Rock over here?” She winked at him again, and her yoyo began to glow with a pulsing energy.  
Joshua grinned his Cheshire grin and winked back. “I like you.”

* * *

Annabelle sat upon her Composer throne, carefully thumbing through the plans of her Game today. Seven teams had already completed their mission, far more than she’d originally accounted for.  
  
“I must have made today’s mission too easy,” she addressed Reece, who was still in his workshop but she knew he could hear her. One of the things she admired about Reece was his virtual omnipresence in the HQ. “Megan and Rocky must be slacking off today. Perhaps I should have sent Malcolm in her place, let Megan get some more rest after yesterday. It’s odd about Rocky, though, his kill count is normally much higher than this.” Reece did not reply, to Annabelle’s mild disappointment.  
  
She checked her feed into the goal of the mission. There was Megan, fighting a pair of Pin Players with what looked like relative ease. Annabelle was relieved to see that she had healed fairly quickly, and her kill count was steadily rising. But other Players were clearly sneaking around her to reach the actual mission goal, some low-level Red Noise.   
“Where the hell is Rock?” She scanned the immediate vicinity around Megan’s battle, but found nothing. Annabelle began to fume silently; after the London Eye incident, she was in no mood to deal with straying Reapers. She opened up the map of the London cityscape and looked over everything to find her Reaper. It didn’t take long to find the giant lasers firing into the sky.  
  
She zoomed in. “There you are Rocky… Oh bloody hell, the Americans.” There was Amelia Mandlo and Bradford Coglitch, some American nobodies that came to London on vacation and got killed in a hit and run. Probably because of their gaudy fashion sense, Annabelle thought. Their very appearance is a road hazard. They’d been picking fights with her Reapers all week. The girl especially had an intensely violent streak, Coglitch was actually fairly calm. It was rather amusing to Annabelle to watch them get tossed in the dirt whenever they’d start something stupid with a Reaper, but somehow they always managed to slink away and finish the mission before they could be erased. And now they were keeping Rocky away from his post.  
  
“Stupid wanker Yankees,” Annabelle grimaced. She narrowed her eyes at the fight: there was Mandlo, skating around and waving her yoyo like a flail, of course. There was Coglitch, doing what appeared to be cheerleading with his boom box, giving Mandlo various buffs of course. And there was Rocky with his Tamed Noise, going completely berserk and breaking things in the UG. But who was the fourth figure?  
The frame froze at Annabelle’s command, and she focused on the blonde figure. Asian, vaguely masculine, and… holding a cell phone that hadn’t been invented outside of the UG yet.  
“You aren’t a Player…” She let the feed continue playing.

* * *

“Wooooooooooo!” Amy spun over and around a flurry of arms and sped past Rocky, her yoyo propelling her forward in an explosive version of the “walk the dog” trick. She skid into a U-turn and swung at an amalgamation of black serpentine limbs. A few popped open upon contact with her yoyo and left a gap for her to fashionably leap through and bring the yoyo back down on the Reaper core in a swirling arch before speeding away again.  
  
Meanwhile, Joshua was making the sound barrier his bitch. He’d grossly underestimated the strength of this Reaper, at first, so now he decided to take things a little more seriously. But with Rocky’s attention split between two targets now, Joshua didn’t have to try to dodge his blows. Rocky himself was chasing after him to the best of his ability, striking at Joshua’s after-image and getting slammed by barrages of laser fire. With every hit more and more of the Noise inside his body crept out of him; if Rocky so much as opened his mouth the worm-like thing would strike out and try to bite whatever was in front of it. There were shards of metal and mail envelopes caught in its teeth from one angry outburst. Joshua thought it wasn’t very fair, but they were making one hell of a show.  
  
“Good to see you’re having fun,” Joshua called back to Amy.  
“Hahahahaha, are you kidding?” She screamed over the wind blowing in her ears. “This is the scariest fucking shit I’ve done in my entire life! I can’t feel my everything!” She grabbed a light post and spun around it into a multicolored tornado, her yoyo whirling like a buzz saw and laughing crazily.  
“Whoa…” Joshua dived under Rocky and blasted him into the troposphere. It was more of a forceful hit than a painful one. “Is she okay?” he asked Brad in the brief moments they had before Rocky came back.  
  
“Yeah, girl gets a little wack when she fights Reapers.” He shrugged to the rhythm of the music. “Don’t sweat it, Jay.”  
Joshua snickered. “Seriously, you HAVE to meet my friend Beat.”  
Brad pointed to the sky. “Yo man heads up!”  
  
The black amorphous asteroid known as Rocky and his Tamed Noise came down on Joshua faster than a cell could split and slammed into the ground with a sound that only a volcano could be heard over. A thousand sharp teeth were fighting to dig into Joshua’s flesh and keep him immobilized.  
“Josh!” Amy raced to the mountain of Noise flesh prepared to dig out Joshua with her yoyo. Suddenly a mostly human body burst out of the Noise and grabbed her by the throat.  
  
“You first!” Rocky roared as he carried her into the air, his Noise tethering him to Joshua and the ground. His Noise squealed between his teeth and nipped at her torso, tearing off chunks of her stomach and chest as if she was an apple. Rocky bit the wormy thing and it retracted back into his gullet.  
  
“Shit!” Brad exchanged mix tapes in his boom box at a panicked speed. He aimed the speakers at the Reaper. “You get your fucking hands off of her!” He started the music and two twisting pylons shot out of the speakers and slammed into Rocky’s gut with a loud metal chorus. He recoiled and dropped Amy, giving her a moment to hit him in the side of the head with her yoyo. Brad dropped his boom box to run out and catch her. She was bleeding pretty badly.  
At the same moment Brad’s blast struck Rocky, Joshua burnt a hole through the Noise pile and leapt out into the sky above Rocky.

* * *

As Annabelle was watching him ascend, she saw the boy do something terrifying: he winked and pointed his finger at her through the screen. She leapt back as he fell back down and drove his knee into Rocky’s skull and blew him into the asphalt.  
“Reece!” She yelled.  
  
“I saw it too,” Reece appeared behind her throne. “Malcolm and Richard are heading to that location as we speak.”  
“You need to go too,” Annabelle said. There was an edge of fear in her voice. “They won’t stand a chance, you need to go take care of this.” She stood up and raced past Reece to a secret door in the back wall. “Go now damnit!”  
  
Damnit, I knew that kid looked familiar! Her thoughts raced as she sped through the secret halls of the HQ into her personal study. There was a filing cabinet impossibly filled with reports and documents about Games and Composers from all over the world. She’d been studying them ever since she became a Composer in order to better do her job.  
No Player or Reaper could know she was watching them, especially not one from outside. Annabelle rifled through the Japanese Composers, and after some flustered digging, she found a match.  
  
“Yoshiya Kiryu,” she read. “Shibuya, Japan… Why the fuck are you in my territory?”  
An onset of realization shivered Annabelle’s spine. The Living Player. He belongs to Kiryu. They said he was connected to Seras. Kiryu is working with Seras. Kiryu is trying to dethrone me!  
  
Annabelle involuntarily dropped the file. Joshua was smiling up at her from his picture, taunting her. He had more experience. He made one of the most complicated Reaper Games in the world. He had a veritable army of Reapers at his beck and call, and she only had four and a Producer because nobody wanted to stay dead in London while hundreds of Japanese kids are lining up at his door for the opportunity. He had an angel for a Producer, and Reece was just a thousand years old. He had a Living Player. No matter what angle Annabelle came at the problem, she was stunningly outmatched. If Reece didn’t erase him right now, things could become unwinnable.   
  
“No…” Annabelle growled. She stared at Joshua’s picture, and it stared back. “I’m not going down, not like this.” She stormed out of the study and out of the Reaper HQ. The sun was setting, night had all but fallen. The Player’s mission had nearly ended.  
“I will not have my right stolen by that girl again!” She announced to the London skyline. She bellowed from her very soul the goal she carved into her life. Her power flared and electrified the city of London, and everyone living and dead felt her energy at the same moment. “If anyone tries to deny me, I will destroy them! I am Composer King, and I will ascend into godhood!”

* * *

Looming over Rocky’s limp body, Joshua felt a wave crash against him. He smiled, knowing that his message had been received. Suddenly the day had become very productive.  
Rocky struggled to raise his body from the cracked earth. Blood and Noise was dripping from his wounds. Brad had already fled with Amy in his arms to recuperate; the Reaper and the Composer were alone.  
  
“Still alive?” Joshua asked mockingly. “Do you need anything? Coffee? A bowl of chicken soup?” He kicked the Reaper in the stomach and he hit the ground ten feet away. “Should I draw you a nice hot bath?” Joshua approached the sprawled body and leaned down, his hands in his pockets.   
  
“Or maybe I should just erase you now. Would you prefer that?” The air temperature spiked and Joshua raised his hand to block the barrage of explosive fire coming at him. He turned to see two Reapers lording over the scene from the rooftops. A fiery ball formed in front of Oni’s outstretched hand.  
“Get away from our friend,” he said in a low, threatening tone. Richard stood beside him, his hand hidden under his vest.  
Joshua’s face changed instantly into an amicable smile. “I’ve seen you on TV.”  
  
“Get. Away. From. Rocky.” Joshua raised his hands in submission and backed off. The two leapt from the roof and stood between Joshua and Rocky. Oni kept his attack ready and poised to knock Joshua’s head off while Richard helped Rocky onto his feet.  
Rocky coughed painfully. “He’s… with Seras.”  
  
“We know Rock,” Richard said. He slid Rocky’s arm around his shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you home and fixed up.”  
“No!” Rocky struggled to escape Richard’s weak grasp. “I can fight! He’s going to tell me where Seras is and I’m going to kill her!”  
“You’re missing part of your face Rock,” Oni pointed out. “You aren’t fighting shit. Just leave this to me while Richard gets you out of here.”  
  
Rocky struggled harder. “Fuck you Oni! You’re going to bring that treacherous cunt back here to kill us all, just like Bobby! Oh God, Bobby…” He started trembling uncontrollably at the memory of his friend. The Noise in his body began to squirm with life.  
“Rock.” Richard and Rocky turned back to see Reece standing behind them. Joshua leaned to the side with curiosity. Oni didn’t look away from Joshua. “You’re relieved for the day.”  
  
“I can help with that,” Joshua said giddily. He typed a command into his phone and Rocky disappeared into a portal. Richard nearly lost his arm trying to catch him when the portal closed again. “No need to worry, I just sent him to a spa. Some hot water and pretty British girls should help calm him down.”  
Oni grit his teeth to suppress his anger. Reece walked forward calmly. “At ease Oni, Rocky will be okay. Had the Composer deigned to, he would have killed Rocky long before we even knew they were fighting.”  
  
Oni and Richard were taken aback. “Composer?!” Joshua chuckled at the fear he saw born in their eyes.  
“Composer Yoshiya Kiryu, from Shibuya, Japan.” He mocked a traditional Japanese bow to the three. “And you are Reece Nayake.”  
Reece raised an eyebrow. “You know me?”  
  
“I learned everything about the London UG before I came. I know your names, your entrance Games, every Composer you’ve served under.” He paused and gave a devious smile at the three. “Your histories. London really is a depressing place to die.”  
“Well, that’s disturbing.” Oni lowered his arm and let his body relax.  
  
“Composer Kiryu,” Richard started.  
“Please, call me Joshua,” he interrupted. “’Composer Kiryu’ just sounds so tacky. It’s like Composer King, far too heavy handed.” He chuckled again.  
“Joshua,” Richard started again. “We have a lot of questions.”  
“No time,” Joshua said. “You want Seras? I’ll take you to her, but we need to leave now. Our time is extremely limited.”  
“That’s not happening,” Reece said simply.  
“What?” Oni said. “Mr. Nayake, questions are all well and good, but he’s offering to take us to Seras NOW. I’d jump at this opportunity.”  
  
“Being rash isn’t going to help us bring Seras back Oni,” Reece countered. “We need information Joshua, and rather than arguing about whether or not you will give it to us we will waste less time if you just give us the answers we want.”  
Joshua sighed. He looked to the setting sun: very little time left. The vampire would be approaching that ship as they speak. “Make it fast. I’ll answer what I can.”  
“Why are you helping Seras?” Richard asked immediately.  
  
“I was ordered to,” Joshua said.  
Reece started at this. “The Higher Ups sent you to enthrone Seras? Why enthrone Annabelle than to begin with?”  
Joshua shrugged. “Protocol I guess. Ever since Seras became a Composer to begin with the Higher Ups have been a little crazy. I didn’t question it too much.” Reece took a moment to think about this.  
  
“So we even have the Higher Ups on our side,” Oni said. “Great, then Annabelle won’t argue. How can she say no to Their will?”  
“Heh, funny thing about that actually,” Joshua laughed awkwardly. “They aren’t going to make that order for about another twenty years.” The three stared at Joshua in astonishment. Even Reece was at a loss for words. “They needed me specifically to take care of this at this specific point in time, not the past me that could have just taken a plane to get here.”  
  
“Oh boy…” Reece pinched the bridge of his nose. “Let’s just… ignore that for now. It actually doesn’t matter.”  
“I think it matters a lot actually!” Richard cut in. “What happens in the future that makes the Higher Ups want Seras back? Why does it have to be now, why couldn’t you take care of this in your time? If you do something wrong can you just go back in time again and fix it? Have you done that already? There are a lot of follow up questions here!”  
  
“Don’t know, don’t know, the portal back was one use only. If we do this right, we get taken back to our time. Otherwise, we just kind of die and another version of me gets to do this in some alternate dimension or something. I’m honestly making wild leaps of logic here, I really don’t know. It’s a Higher Up thing, like I said I didn’t question it.”  
“Okay enough,” Reece said. “Let’s focus on Seras. Her vampirism, how deep in is she?” Richard became quiet, and Joshua noticed Oni visibly shrink.  
  
“She’s unbloodied,” Joshua replied. The three let out a small sigh of relief. “She’s tasted human blood but hasn’t actually drank yet.”  
“Good,” Reece said. “A little tinkering and some begging to the Higher Ups and I might be able to reverse and unbloodied vampire. She’ll die, but she’ll be a Composer by then so it won’t matter.”  
“Except there’s another problem with that,” Joshua continued. “She’s unbloodied now, but I don’t know if she will continue to be after tonight. Which is why we should really get going!”  
  
“Tonight?” Oni said. “What happens tonight?”  
“A war.” There was silence. “A war that your little girl gets caught in the middle of because of her vampirism. Vampires swarm the streets of London and bath the city in blood.”  
Nobody spoke. After a moment, Oni’s voice croaked. “Does she survive?”  
  
Joshua looked down. “I don’t know. Officially Seras died months ago, there’s no recorded history of her after that. The information I got about her from the Higher Ups was extensive up to this point, but after the battle nothing.”  
Reece spoke up. “Who wins?”  
“Yes, please tell us who wins.”  
  
Joshua spun around and was struck by a lone figure cast against the setting sun. His slim proportions actually rivalled his own in femininity. His piercing light red eyes met Joshua’s with unnatural confidence, and his precisely trimmed blonde hair was offset by twitching dark cat ears.  
“Are those cat ears?” Richard asked.  
“Is that a guy or a girl?” Oni followed.  
“Is that a Swastika?!” Reece finished.  
  
“Oh no,” Joshua muttered. “No no no, it’s too soon. You aren’t supposed to be here until nightfall!”  
“No need to worry Joshua,” the cat Nazi appeared behind Joshua and leaned his chin on his shoulder. Joshua jumped away in surprise. “We’re still following schedule, it’s only me.”  
“You know my name,” Joshua was beginning to panic. “You can’t know my name. How do you know my name? None of you have even been in London since I got here!”  
“Oh Joshua, you’ve lost your touch.” The cat Nazi smiled exactly how you’d expect he would. “I am everywhere and nowhere. I’ve been watching you and Neku for days now, and reported everything to the Major.” Joshua brought up his phone and atomized the Nazi with a single laser. The other three stepped back out of the way.  
  
“So who does win?” The Nazi lounged upon a nearby light post, his ears twitching playfully. “Do you really think using frauline to get these Reapers on Hellsing’s side will stop us? The Major welcomes the additional challenge!” He jumped down in front of Joshua and smiled self-assuredly at him.  
Joshua was struck with shock. “You… you think that’s what I’m doing? Recruiting soldiers to fight you?” Joshua’s face twitched. His lips curled into a horrific smile, and his eyes lit up as he started laughing. He gripped his sides from the splitting pain of this joke. He was nearly crying. “You think I care about your stupid war?! Ahahahaha, that’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard! I couldn’t give less of a crap about your war!” He bent over laughing hysterically. The Nazi didn’t waver in his charm. The Reapers felt a little out of the loop.  
“Let me tell you something about your war,” Joshua said, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. “You all DIE! Your forces last a single night before getting completely slaughtered by a few religious zealots and some vampires! Kill as many people as you want, because in the end it will mean absolutely nothing! You have no chance of winning, and in the end, every single one of you will meet a horrible death! Your bodies will be burned by men in hazmat suits with flamethrowers and your remains get tossed into the trash. You and your war are literally nothing to me except a mild annoyance that I’ll have to deal with to pursue my actual goal.” Joshua was hit with another laughing fit, and when he managed to open his eyes back up the Nazi was gone. The sun had now completely vanished behind the horizon, and stars were becoming visible. Somewhere blood was being imbibed greedily, and warships of the air were crossing the sea into English territory. Joshua settled down and opened a portal.  
“Come on,” he said. “We only have a little time.”  
  
There was a long pause between Joshua and the Reapers. They seemed to be having trouble digesting his words to the cat Nazi, or his response to a slaughter of thousands of innocent lives.  
Reece stepped up faster than he humanly should have. “Let’s go.”  
Oni followed. “’Kay.”  
  
Richard was the only one to maintain his hesitation. He remained frozen in his spot, unable to see the grander picture even with his hundreds of years of experience. A Nazi army invading London, killing thousands of people, and then wiped out by vampires? And he was supposed to worry about Seras?  
“Guys,” he said. “You can’t be serious.”  
“What?” Oni said. “We need to get Seras.”  
“SERAS?!” Richard yelled incredulously. “London is about to be attacked, we need to be here and protect everyone!”  
“Out of the question,” Reece said. “We don’t deal in human affairs, you know that.”  
“Did that cat boy look human to you?! He could see us, that makes him, at least, half dead! All the others could be like him too, and even a Composer couldn’t kill him!”  
“Pretty sure he’s unique actually,” Joshua interjected. “The rest are vampires.”  
“Vampires?!” Richard yelled again.  
“Woah,” Oni remarked. “That could actually be a problem Reece. Vampires can see us and the Players, they could do some serious damage in a single night.”  
“Hmm.” Reece contemplated all this. “Oni, you go with the Composer. Richard and I have fought vampires, we stand a better chance against an army.”  
“Right,” Oni said. Joshua led him into the portal and the pair disappeared.  
“Richard,” Reece walked beside the Reaper. “We need to collect both Megan and Rocky and return them to HQ for an emergency healing. Everyone will need to be at their peak.”  
  
“Got it. I’ll go get Megan, you get Rocky.” Richard vaulted into the sky and took off towards the mission end goal. Reece followed his senses and pinpointed Rocky’s location. He sprouted his wings and flew as fast as he dared.  
Composer Annabelle King stood breathlessly atop the seat of her kingdom. She was staring unblinkingly at the shining full moon. She vaguely noticed her four soldiers land behind her. Richard led Rocky and Megan into HQ to be healed; Reece stayed with Annabelle.

* * *

“Anny,” Reece said, a touch of sensitivity in his voice. It was a tone Annabelle hadn’t heard come from him unless he was speaking of Seras. “You feel it too?”  
“Yes,” Annabelle said, keeping her eyes on the glowing celestial body. Inky blackness was beginning to sprout from its center. “A horde of hellspawn come to attack my domain.” She paused to think.  
“Anny, about Seras…”  
“You know what I did Reece.”  
“… Yes.”  
  
Her head leaned down. “Do you hate me for it?”  
Reece hesitated. “I… I don’t understand, Anny. All these years and I still can’t understand.”  
“I don’t regret my actions, Reece. Not one of them. Nothing will hold me back from ascension, not even Seras.” Annabelle turned her head back to him. The moon was slowly being taken over by the dark, and the light in Annabelle’s eyes dimmed. Reece could read the hatred she held in her heart after so long, putrid with its age. “I won’t blame you if you hate me, Reece, so long as you follow my command.”  
  
“And what is your command?” Reece asked with a moment of fear.  
“The same command I’ve given the Players. The same command I will give the Reapers when they’ve finished their business. The same command that I will personally follow.” She turned to her Producer, grim and determined. The night had arrived, the moon was broken. In moments, the Players would awaken for the second time that day, and for many it would be the last time they do.  
“Kill every vampire and defend London and its people.”  
  
For both the living and the dead, the Hellsing War had begun.


	10. The Beginning of War

“Any word on a mission?” Amy leaned back in a lawn chair she’d found shortly after waking up. Some big blimps were lazily inching past them overhead; she regarded them with the smallest amount of curiosity she could muster. It wasn’t a Noise or a Reaper, so Amy assumed she couldn’t fight it.

“Nothin’ yet. Them keeping us waiting like this is wack man.” Brad stared deep into his palm as though he thought he could summon a mission and timer. Amy glanced at him and wiggled her toes mindlessly. A few other Players had chosen to make camp in a late-night café where they could be seen and served. A few loners were playing with cups of coffee and tinkering with equipment. A few Pin users shuffled through their collections for whatever the night had in store.

“Word, B. And what’s the deal with waking us all up twice in a day? I don’t think that’s on the level.”

Some Player girl turned to them. She barely looked a day over eight. “Are you two idiots?”

Brad wasn’t fond of the arrogance in her tone. “Yo, you got a problem sister?”

The girl rolled her eyes. “The Reapers woke us up because of those, dummies.” She pointed to the zeppelins that had passed them minutes ago.

Amy spun a wheel on her skates. “What, the ad balloons? Unless you Limeys have some sick ramps, I ain’t getting up there.”

“They aren’t advertisements,” an older boy said. “Those have swastikas on them, it’s a new Arian resurrection.”

“Sorry dude, I don’t get your Brit moon speak. They have a what and a new huh?”

“Holy shit…” Brad dropped his hand and moved to get a better look at the zeppelins. “He’s right. Aimes, those are fucking Nazis!”

A small outcry came from the group of Players, and one by one they began to rise and head out. Amy and Brad looked to their palms, and found a new mission statement. No timer, no nuance.

“Kill all the vampires. Whoever fights and survives the night will be declared a winner.”

Amy smiled childishly and jumped to her feet. “B-man, we’ve just unlocked our endgame!”

Brad shouldered his boom box and returned her grin. “Let’s go make some garlic bling.”

* * *

 

_I can smell a calm agony. The corpses seek nourishment. It is nothing, let the bodies feast. My dish is waiting for me, down below. The smell tantalizes me. So close, so very close._

_Tonight I finish my mission._

_Tonight I devour the Composer of London._

* * *

 

“Oh God…” Megan gaped dumbly at the corpulent mechanical monstrosities silently crawling their way through the London skies. The crossed eye of annihilation and odium perceived all the frail blood bags of England and found the kingdom plump and lazed, perfectly prepared for its homicidal resurrection. Megan was stricken, frozen into her boots. Somehow these profane zeppelins had incited a feeling of dread that surpassed those that ended her life over eighty years before.

“So…” Rocky breathed, similarly struck with awe at the malignant sight. “Those are filled with vampires.”

“Nazi vampires,” Richard corrected. “Heavily armed, most likely.”

Reece stood in the shadow of the leading warship, staring up at the thing’s abhorrence waver out into the very air it sailed upon. His nose wrinkled tightly as he caught the stench of refused Death. “What are your orders, Composer King?”

Annabelle put great weight on her thoughts in that moment. Any wrong decision could lead to a massacre. “We can’t approach the warships directly, they likely have heavy anti-air cannons that could tear us apart before we got close. For now all we can do is get the civilians as far away from them as possible. Carry them all if you have to.”

“But…” Megan mumbled with some trepidation. “They’ll have bombs.” The Composer looked back at her terrified Reaper with some disapproval. She sighed and patted her shoulder.

“You hang behind and prepare for the invasion Megan. You’re too PTSD for this, if they started bombing you’d either freeze or panic. I don’t need you dead tonight.” Megan nodded slightly. Annabelle turned back to her other soldiers. “We move out now. Women and children first.” She stopped, suddenly realizing the problem with her ranks.

“Where is Malcolm?”

* * *

 

Oni had fallen before. Oni had turned off lights before. Oni had even been eaten once before, but he didn't like talking about that. Going into Joshua's portal was like going blind and being eaten by the devil while falling into the infinite abyss of Tartarus. Oni put his feelings roughly this eloquently:

"FUUUUUUUUUUCK!"

Joshua giggled girlishly and leaned back into their descent. He checked the time on his phone: they were incredibly limited. If he and the Reaper couldn’t get Seras to at least believe them before the attack begins, he might lose his chance. This was going to be tight, but he believed he could pull it off. The sight of the Reaper was bound to bring back some memory or emotion… probably. Joshua bit his lip anxiously.

“Quit screaming,” Joshua said. “I’m trying to think.”

Suddenly Joshua saw a dim light and heard a heavy thunk below him. He casually turned his flying back on and floated to the ground beside the crippled Reaper. “Up and at ‘em boy-o, nap time isn’t scheduled until after finger painting.”

Oni gasped painfully as he focused on putting his broken ribs back into place. “Stick it up your arse and die.”

“Shut up and walk, dear.” Joshua brusquely picked Oni off the ground and led him down the hall. The Hellsing Manor was caught in a standstill: all the Wild Geese were crowding the windows, looking out toward the city to try and get a glimpse of the war balloons. Neku had been trapped at the back and couldn’t see anything.

“Neku, where’s Seras?” Joshua questioned him. Neku turned his head and flinched when he saw Oni.

“Uhh…” he stammered.

“Yes yes I know, former enemy now an ally, we’re all shocked.” Joshua rolled his eyes impatiently. “Where’s Seras?”

“I don’t know, somewhere else? Joshua she’s NOT going to like him being here.”

“Nice to see you too kid,” Oni grumbled. “Thanks again for blowing me up.”

Joshua cut in before the two had a chance to prattle on. “Don’t care, need Seras.” He grabbed Oni by the collar and marched down the hallway, eyes flashing at every side. Neku decided that the best place to be during dead people drama was far, far away. He returned to trying to peak over shoulders at the window. Then he started thinking about Joshua’s demented focus.

“… Shit.” He followed in the direction they left.

Seras and Bernadotte were lucky in that they were the only people in the Manor with a window all to themselves. Seras in particular could make out the zeppelins with her vampire vision, cutting out their outline from the starry sky. Suddenly the door behind them burst open and Joshua appeared in its crumbling wake.

“Don’t worry, that was going to break eventually anyway.” Joshua’s focus shot to Bernadotte in an instant and he flipped out his phone before he could turn around in shock. “Go to the command center, you are not needed here.” A portal opened beneath Pip’s boots and he tumbled in with an echoing spout of flabbergasted gibberish.

Seras was permitted to finish turning around though, and caught a few scraps of wood in her face for doing so. “Joshua? What are you doing? Captain?!”

Joshua waved his hand indifferently, taking on his charm and serenity in an instant. “No worries Seras, the good captain just returned to his post. Now…” He paused for dramatic effect and stepped to the side. “I believe you used to know this man.”

A sweeping blackness curled into the door frame and inched forward tenderly. Oni was never sure how he might react if he ever saw Seras again, and he found himself caught in a field of discomfort now that he was in her presence. He tried to hide his embarrassment behind some strands of hair, and he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. Oni was immediately aware of how… sizable Seras had changed since she was a child. Every dirty joke he’d ever made around her suddenly gave him an unbearable sense of shame. Oni remained stubbornly silent.

Seras was not inclined to start a conversation. His wiry black wings had been obvious the moment he entered the room, and her mind had been piecing together what was happening ever since.

“Joshua,” she sighed. “I don’t know this guy.” His smile wavered for an instant. Joshua had hoped that seeing the Reaper might bring something back up, even if it was hazy. Just enough to make her believe. He barely opened his mouth to start talking when a hand grabbed him by the wrist and escorted him away from the scene.

Neku glared at him. Under less time-constrained circumstances Joshua would’ve thought it was cute.

“Leave them be Joshua,” Neku warned. “Let them work it out, you aren’t going to help.” Joshua flexed his arm and Neku’s grip popped off like a bottle cap. He was taken aback by the haphazard show of force.

Joshua evened himself. “Neku, do not interfere right now. This is very, very important and I need things to go smoothly. You don’t understand how badly we both need Seras enthroned tonight before something goes wrong.”

“Than explain it to me,” Neku said. “And while you’re doing that, they can warm up to each other instead of you forcing them to interact.”

Back inside, Oni was still lost for words. Seras had crossed her arms, further crushing him with shame and self-disgust. His feet were doing a nervous dance, and his hands went in and out of his pockets like paranoid gophers. Seras was starting to feel more pity than caution. This Reaper wasn’t trying to kill her, he looked like he was about to wet himself.

Then she realized just how much of an opportunity this was to finally get some straight answers.

“What’s your name?” she asked, trying to sound amicable.

Oni appeared to take damage. He’d been slightly hoping that she wouldn’t acknowledge him. At least not until he had the courage to either speak first or gouge his eyes out, whichever seemed more reasonable. He took a deep breath and struggled to maintain eye contact with her.

“Malcolm. Ah… you… my friends call me Oni.”

“Malcolm,” Seras repeated, and a million needles stabbed at Oni’s heart. “I’m Seras.”

Oni began to lose his voice. “Yes, I, um. I know. You’ve… you’ve grown since I last saw you.” He laughed nervously and scratched his neck, hiding behind his arm.

Seras bent her head, almost appearing disappointed. “Oh.” She couldn’t think of words for a moment or two. “So… it’s true then? About me being a Composer.”

Despite fully expecting this, Oni was still taken by some surprise. “You really don’t remember any of it?” She shook her head. Emotion began to fill Oni in a way he couldn’t remember having ever happened to him before. His body moved without his own consent, and it independently chose to dash forward and embrace his little girl.

“I’m so sorry,” Oni wept tearlessly. His body was cringing, but his hold was firm. He couldn’t see the woman that Joshua introduced him to; in his arms was the tiny Seras he remembered from her childhood, eyes full of wonder and love. “I should have found you sooner. We all thought you were dead, but I should have looked for you. I’m sorry Seras, I’m so sorry!”

Seras was struck by the rush of emotion coming from the Reaper, and could return none of it. She had no empathy to offer the man, no notion of sadness or regret. Not even a word of comfort would come to her. There was nothing she could offer Oni except a weak and awkward hug.

After a few endless moments Oni managed to take back control of himself and separated from the new Seras. A total stranger, he realized. This person was a total stranger who he had never met, and who never met him.

“Ahem,” he coughed, tugging at his cuffs. “That was weird, right?”

Seras said nothing.

“Yeah. Thought so.” He smiled in a poor attempt to level out the spiking tension. “Sorry about that, kid. Old men like me get a little worked up sometimes.”

Back outside, Joshua grit his teeth in a strenuous attempt at a smile and clenched his hair in a fist. “Neku dear,” he hissed between his teeth. “You are not appreciating just how screwed we are if Seras doesn’t get enthroned right now. We are really going to need the backup, otherwise-“

Suddenly the world decided it was tired of waiting, and a series of distant explosions sent shockwaves rumbling through the Hellsing Manor. Pillars of fire cast a hot light into the eyes of the soldiers watching the horizon of London.

Neku jumped out of his skin and dashed to the nearest window, which was inside the room Seras and Oni were. The three looked out to the city skyline and saw it being burned to the ground. Balls of fire were being propelled from the zeppelins and combusting in a spectacular fashion. Joshua stood in the background, cursing himself.

“What the hell is going on out there?!” Neku exclaimed in Seras’ ear.

“Millennium,” she breathed. “They’re actually attacking the city!”

A sharp tone went off from Oni’s phone. “Anny’s summoning me. Shit! The invasion is going to be starting soon.”

“Invasion? This isn’t just a bombing?”

“Not according to the Composer over there. He said that London would be invaded by an army of Nazi vampires.”

“Nazi vampires?!” Neku threw up his arms. “Am I the only one out of the loop here?”

Seras turned back. “Composer? You’re a Composer?!”

“Did I not mention that?” Joshua responded, truly unsure if he had or not. “Whatever, doesn’t matter. They’ll be heading to the Manor in an hour tops. Neku, let’s get ready to intercept.”

“Excuse me?” Neku turned to Joshua. “We can’t stay here, we need to go to the city to help!”

“No way,” Joshua said, putting his foot down. “Out of the question. We’re staying here to make sure Seras lasts the night.”

“She’s a vampire with a trained army,” Neku argued. “The yard is filled to the brim with explosives, she’ll be fine. A few Reapers can’t protect all of London, without us people are going to die!”

“So?”

Neku stopped. Joshua’s eyes were ancient and cold, and they bore into Neku like pin-needles through insects. Seras caught a glancing blow of his gaze and was crushed by it. Her will crumbled at the very sight of Joshua’s cruel apathy. Oni was struck with the recollection of Reece when he’d first met the Producer. Suddenly he couldn’t tell how old this Composer was, but he could tell he was timeworn enough to let an entire city die without a second thought.

Neku lowered his head, obscuring his face with his bangs. His arms hung limp, loose and seemingly useless.

“You still don’t care,” Neku said. “About anyone.”

Joshua gave a crooked smile. “Come on sweety, that’s unfair. I care about you, don’t I?” Neku didn’t respond. His smile melted. “Neku, this is more important. It’s our job to put Seras back on the throne, not stop the war. It’s fine, they lose anyway.”

“’More important?’ One person’s life is more important than a million? A JOB is more important than the fate of an entire population?!”

Joshua approached him, a sad look in his eyes. “Your life is more important than a billion. You go out there, you’re going to die. But if we stay here, you’ll be safe. Neku, you’re my best friend. I can’t let you die. Not outside of Shibuya where I can’t bring you back. And I can’t take you back to Shibuya unless we finish this job.” He touched Neku’s arm. “Please, understand the position I’m in.”

Oni shuffled his feet awkwardly. “Umm… I should head to the city. Can’t keep Anny waiting.”

“Yeah,” Seras nodded with a similar awkward feeling. “Good luck Malcolm… after all this, if you want to come back?...”

“Maybe,” Oni said, crestfallen. “I don’t know. Between Anny and Rocky… It might be for the best if I don’t come back. Otherwise you might not be safe.”

“Oh… okay. I’m sorry about all of this.”

“Same here, little Composer. Same here.” Oni opened the window and crawled out. He gave Seras a melancholy smile and took off towards the city.

The instant he entered the air, a weight fell on his back.

“Fly faster.” Neku gripped the collar of his trench coat for dear life.

Joshua stood frozen to the floor, dumbfounded. A moment ago Neku had been standing right in front of him, the next he had vanished and reappeared on the back of a Reaper approaching the speed of sound.

“Neku?” His bemusement began to contort and shift into rage. Power began to exude from his body. His feet left the ground as the loose articles of his form was blown by an unseen force. He turned to Seras, and if she wasn’t a vampire she couldn’t have even begun to comprehend his entire form. The look in his eyes brought a feeling of Archean lifelessness.

“Victoria, if you die before I get back, I swear by every god above me that I will follow you into the depths of Hell and tear apart your filthy vampiric soul!” There was a burst of charged light, and Joshua was gone.

* * *

 

“Damn…” Brad watched fire and shrapnel dance across the night sky, only to become curtained with smoke and screaming. He looked down and inspected the garlic cloves he’d strung around his neck, and felt ridiculous.

“Glad we didn’t wake up around the big clock,” Amy said. “It looks like they ran out of bombs.”

“Which means the soldiers will be coming down next.”

She chuckled lightly. “Rambo vampires. Now don’t that sound like a wicked movie? And here we are, the rad heroes ready to save the day!”

Brad did not share her enthusiasm. “Let’s just go find some people, ‘kay? They’ll probably attract the vampires, so we can kill a few and get our prize. Bring along any other Players on the way too.”

“Hey hey, nice thinking B!” She slapped him on the back. “An army of Players against an army of Nazi vampires! That’s the kind of gnarly action only you could dream up. This is gonna be a party to remember!” She knelt down, and Brad climbed onto her back. A quick spin of her yoyo and the two Players were screeching down the road.

It was understandably easy for Joshua to catch up with Oni and Neku. With Neku weighing him down, Oni could just barely break the sound barrier and reach the edge of the city before Joshua appeared in front of him and, appropriately, inspired the fear of God within his heart. But the instant they’d passed the city limits Neku had jumped off his back and was speeding his way over rooftops.

Neku could see the black outlines of zeppelins in the distance, and humanoid figures descending from them. He couldn’t make out a single parachute, so he figured the Reaper had to be right: Nazi vampires. If he weren’t racing at a speed faster than his living body could maintain, Neku would be considering how ridiculous his life was.

“What are you doing Neku?” Joshua appeared floating beside him. He kept pace with Neku without as much as a drop of sweat, even when he teleported.

“What I said I was going to do,” Neku panted between steps. Gunfire and screams echoed across the city; Neku turned to follow the nearest outburst. “These people need protection.”

“It’s not our problem,” Joshua said, typing a few things into his phone. “Let the Reapers handle them.” A portal gaped open in Neku’s path. He managed to dodge around it and teleport over an opening.

“We already discussed this Joshua. I’m going to help, and if you don’t care than you can fuck off back to the Manor.” He leapt over another portal.

“You’ll die out here Neku.”

“Then stay and help. We work better as a team anyway.”

“Yes, we do,” Joshua agreed. “Which is why we should both go back to Seras so we can team up on the vampires that will go there!”

“How do you know they’ll go after Hellsing?”

“They’re vampires, of course they would go after the only threat to their victory.”

Neku slowed at the edge of the roof. Down on the road below was a squad of vampires shooting down citizens. A few of them were already eating corpses.

“Well than,” Neku said, pulling out all of his pins. “They’ll have to come at me first!” He dove off the building and clicked a few pins in his hands. Before the troops could react, spears of ice shot through their bodies and pierced several of their hearts. A flurry of fire balls and boulders were hurled at them from above, crushing their skulls. Neku landed and sliced off the head of a survivor with one clean wave of his hand.

“Huh,” Neku pondered, scanning the bodies. “That was easier than I thought it would be.”

Joshua’s voice came from behind him. “Gee, I wonder why?” Neku turned to see Joshua levitating a ball of vampire bodies writhing and biting at the air, reaching for their lost firearms like infantile chimps. A laser pierced through the air and rendered the soldiers ash. “They had you surrounded Neku, you would have been shot and eaten.”

Neku looked at the space the vampires had been moments before. “Yeah, probably. But they didn’t.”

“Because I was here to protect you,” Joshua sighed.

“Well, keep it up. Because I’m not done.” Neku readjusted his headphones.

“But-“

“Look, Joshua,” Neku cut him off. “Neither of us are going to agree on this. I won’t force you to stay with me, and you aren’t going to make me leave these people to die. So you can try to cut me off with as many portals as you want, and I’m going to keep dodging them.”

Joshua didn’t respond, but after a moment silently nodded his head.

“Good,” Neku said. “Then let’s get going.” He turned to run and nearly crashed into a portal. After a short correction he starting running again, and nearly tripped into another one.

Joshua giggled behind him. “You said I could keep trying.”

* * *

 

Seras was suiting up on the roof of Hellsing Manor. She had to drag the weaponry up here as well, since no one else could lift it. She could feel the vibrations of scrambling boots below her as the Wild Geese prepared for battle. She spoke into her headset.

“You alright Captain? That looked like quite a fall.”

“Oui,” Bernadotte’s voice responded in her ear. “It was quite the surprise, but I landed on a very soft chair. Are you prepared yet mon chère?”

“Just about,” Seras grunted, strapping on the hefty ammo pack. “Bloody hell this thing is difficult. It’s way too big…” She stopped mid-sentence, just barely catching herself. There was silence on the other end of the line.

“What was that, mon chère?”

“Captain, not a word!”

There was some static in her ear, which could have been snickering. “I don’t know what you mean.”

* * *

 

_Fire. I’m burning. Odd._

_People. Corpses. Gunpowder. Bullets are touching me. Nothing important._

_I smell souls. Players. Reapers. No Composer. Too bad._

_Might as well have an appetizer._

_Kill. Kill. Kill._

* * *

 

Oni blew down the streets, firing explosive energy and any vampire he encountered. Most were too slow to dodge his shots, some were able to return his fire with useless bullets. As long as the Reapers existed purely in the UG London, anything other than the vampires themselves was nothing but a mild irritant. They were too dependent on their firearms.

But when some of them did get in close, Oni was at a disadvantage. They could rend flesh from bone with their fingers while he had above-average strength punches. Against the living he was fine, but the vampires had to be kept at a distance. Which was why Oni silently panicked as two soldiers dashed around him and literally nipped at his face.

He ducked under one jab and countered with an uppercut to the creature’s jaw. It was launched into the air, but landed on its feet and continued the assault. “You know,” Oni said as he beat the second one off his back. “If you guys weren’t so murdery you’d make very durable punching bags.”

“In that case, let’s string a couple up.” A black tendril reached around the first vampire’s throat and dragged it into the air. Its decapitated body fell back down, but the head was gone. Rocky approached the scene, his newly-healed body already damaged and leaking Noise.

A wet gashing sound came from behind Oni. He turned to see the second vampire fall apart limply in bloody chunks. Richard swung the tainted blood off his silver short sword with a grimace.

“Glad to see you finally showed up,” Richard said. “There are a lot of these things infesting the city. Must have killed fifty already, but more keep coming.”

“That is how an invasion works,” Oni joked. “Where’d you get the sword?”

Richard looked down at his blade. “What, are you kidding? I’ve had this since I died; it’s blessed with holy water.”

“Did you steal it from a church?” Oni laughed. Richard just smiled mischievously, an odd look for him.

“More or less. Story for another time though.”

“Agreed. Rocky, how’s the fight looking?”

“Megan is still at HQ, waiting to pick off any stragglers that get too deep into the city. Mr. Nayake and Composer King split off at the impact site so they could form a perimeter and block off the Nazi’s progress. Players are fighting the main body of troops.”

“Players? We can’t have any more than twenty Players this week, how effective can they be?”

“How effective can four Reapers be?” Richard answered. Oni acquiesced to that. “Anyway, you need backup. Rocky, you go ahead and join the Players. Oni and I will help maintain the perimeter and meet up with you later on.”

Rocky nodded grimly, but Oni could sense the Noise inside him grinning. That thing seriously creeped him out. Rocky leapt up to the roofs and was gone in an instant.

“So,” Richard said once he was sure Rocky was out of earshot. “You met Seras?”

Oni’s shoulders fell a little. “Yeah. It’s bad man. She’s a different person entirely now.”

“Well of course, she’s a teenager,” Richard said, trying to make light of the situation. Oni wasn’t any lighter.

“No man. Not like that.” Richard thought about this, unsure what to feel. He’d lost the ability to have “voids” in his heart a century ago, but he knew the pain Oni must have been going through.

A pack of vampires appeared ahead of them. They brought up their guns and shot at the two Reapers. Oni and Richard barely noticed.

“We can worry about Seras later,” Richard declared, brandishing his blade.

Oni raised his arms and charged a volley of shots. “Yeah.”

* * *

 

Zorin Blitz was on standby waiting on orders from The Major. Her eyes lit with excitement as the thought of stamping upon the Hellsing insects filled her loins with murderous glee. The Major appeared on one of the monitors before her, and Zorin’s body tensed with anticipation.

“Zorin, Start your attack.” The Major ordered with a familiar air of violent joy.

Zorin nodded. “Acknowledged”. The screen shut off and she looked up to face her crew. “Restart Zeppelin 2’s engines! The Zorin Blitz squad is now attacking!” she yelled with the voice of a raiding Viking lord. The engines roared to life and the airborne vehicle of death lurched forward. “Target Hellsing headquarters!” she commanded. Her demonic crew of glorious fiends and ravished beasts steered the zeppelin toward a distant field. Upon that field rested a little mansion, with a little army and a little vampiress. To Zorin it appeared a doll house, and she found great pleasure in burning doll houses.

 


	11. Assault on Hellsing Manor

“Captain, I’ve spotted a zeppelin and a wave of explosives heading our way,” Seras announced into her headset. Bernadotte leaned back in his chair, causing a mild crinkling feedback in the microphone.

“Knock them out of the sky, mon chère.” He swung his cigarette through the air with his tongue. “Give them the hell that they came for!”

“Yes sir!” Seras raised two cannons, both longer than she was tall, and unloaded a barrage of anti-air fire. The recoil alone felt capable of crumbling concrete, but Seras took it all with little more than a grunt and a wide stance. The missiles detonated flaccidly in the smoky sky, torn apart like grasshoppers in a lawn mower. In an instant the skies were clear, save the single blemish lurching toward them. Lights broke out from the sides of the ship, and Seras lowered her cannons to relax her arms. She cradled them as the spotlights converged on her impressive form.

“You’ve shot them all down, mon chère. That new equipment is in top form, huh, mon chère?”

Seras took the cannons back in hand and crouched to a knee, keeping her eye on the enemy ship. Bernadotte was still talking, practically to himself. She began to wonder if he did this during every major battle.

“The Hallconnen II 30mm semi-auto cannon,” Pip drolled. “Maximum range of 4000 meters; gross weight, 345 kilograms. We’re pulling out all the stops against these jokers, mon chère.”

“Mr. Bernadotte,” Seras began, momentarily turning her attention away from the piñata of death that she was about ready to pop. “Would you mind not calling me ‘mon chère?’ I do have an actual name – Seras.”

“Hahaha, sorry about that, young lady.” Seras suspected linguistic foul-play on the captain’s part, but said nothing. There was a small metal flick on the headset, a lighter most likely, and Bernadotte was silent for a few ticks. “Tell me… Can you see London, young lady?”

Even with the many kilometers between them and the hills camouflaging the distant city, it would be hard not to see London on this night. The horizon glowed as though it cratered a deadly volcano on the verge of erupting. The stars had been swallowed up by billowing smoke, blinding all of heaven to their plight. The only angel left to safeguard them from the demons had run off with a threat to murder her eternal soul.

“Yes, I can.”

A slight deviation in the static, a puff of smoke. “Piccadilly Circus, SoHo, and Covent Garden have turned to ashes. Our London is now synonymous with Hell.”

For a moment, just a brief moment, Seras tuned Pip out and thought about that: Hell. Seras had come to believe many things about Hell throughout her life, learned from nuns and priests and vampires. She’d come to believe that Hell was the ultimate end, a violent burning within infinite darkness surrounded by monsters that saw you as a simple thing used to satiate their gluttony. This was the Hell of London, the Hell that Bernadotte believed in and that creatures such as Alucard and the Major thrived within. But what was Hell if a few bombs and three bundles of undead soldiers could rival it? What was Hell if it could be imitated, manufactured, sold out to the highest bidder? Is that what the Reaper Games were, just another production of Hell with its own brand of demon? Was Joshua simply another Satan, and Neku another Sisyphus rolling Joshua’s stones? Is that what Seras had been, in a life she couldn’t remember? Had she cared? Questions flooded her mind, but through years of training and discipline were flushed away. One way or another, Seras stood on the battlefield. Now was no time to ask questions that couldn’t keep her and her men alive.

 “I couldn’t stand London,” Pip continued, unaware that Seras wasn’t listening. “I thought it was a stuffy old city. I didn’t think it was the city for me at all. Even so, when we would go out and party at this cabaret on the weekends, the beer was cold, and tasty, and the bartender was this idiot who liked the most ridiculous dirty jokes. The hookers in the whorehouses were money-grubbers, and there were a lot who were hard on the eyes.” Seras became aware of Bernadotte’s speech when he said “whorehouse.” She wondered what she had missed, but didn’t interrupt. “But you know, they were all nice to us, and had this pitiful look in their eyes.

“The lady at this restaurant on Versailles Road would always serve me their fish and chips when I went there, without me ordering it. She said it was because I was a foreigner, and that it was the local delicacy, time and time again. I told her it was too greasy, and I couldn’t eat it, but since I didn’t want to offend her, I gagged it down, each time, hard though it was.” Seras knew the place and silently pitied the captain. They served the worst fish and chips.

“I couldn’t stand London. But still, those people—the bartender, the hookers, the old lady—had nothing to do with this conflict, or whatever it is. They had nothing to do with this war, or the Nazis, or the vampires. That major guy, and Section XIII, and the Final Battalion, and those of us in Hellsing were none of their concern. But now, there they are, dead bodies eating dead bodies. That’s something I just can’t accept. Seras, let’s avenge them.”

Seras returned to her feet, an old emotion welling up in her bosom. The old feeling of loss, of a lust for vengeance. She hadn’t known many people in her life, and in fact anyone she might have considered a friend had died before she’d become a vampire. But now… everyone was dead. This wasn’t personal, there was no aim in this. Humanity itself was being murdered. Everyone had been wronged. Everyone had to be avenged.

“Let ‘em have it,” Bernadotte finished. Seras rose back to her feet, trigger fingers positively bristling. “Let those guys have it.”

“Mm-hmm, alright,” Seras confirmed. The red burn in her eyes bore backward into her brain, scorching her synapses. It was a bizarre sensation.

“Alright, Chief.” It wasn’t her bloodlust. It wasn’t a blood rage. It was colder, more controlled. More… Alucard.

“All right!” It was a taste of true Vampiric power.

The Hallconnen II felt Seras’ bloody will and gave itself to the battle; the dual cannons dug into her fingers and became them, mere extensions of her strength. The balancing struts dug firmly into the hard stone behind her, metallic tails made to support her in this glorious moment. Now was when the Hallconnen II would realize its purpose. Now it would taste blood, and incite death. It pitied whatever feeble clay bird that would face its wrath on this night.

“Target the enemy flying dreadnought, and prepare to open fire!” _Yeah, target the biggest thing in the sky_ , Seras thought with one last quick sense of levity.

“Fire!”

Seras let the Hallconnen do its thing. At first it seemed ineffective, the zeppelin wasn’t responding to the horrible beating that it was taking. Then, before long, fires started to erupt from spots on the surface. One on the side, another one closer to the front, then another and another until the ship grew a tail of oily smoke. The wiring began to pop off the sides and engines detached in a shower of flames and shrapnel. Pip was yelling something. Seras wasn’t listening.

The dying war machine was yelling something. Seras listened.

“ _Hit her! Hit Seras Victoria!”_

The Hallconnen II answered it.

“ _Fucking try!”_

Seras pressed a hidden switch, and something else joined the conversation. With a robotic pop and hissing, this new entity of destruction was finally permitted to see the battleground. It was not impressed.

“The wide-area suppression incendiary burst grenade launcher,” Bernadotte recited from his briefing pamphlet. “Vladimir…?”

Few words passed between Hallconnen and Vladimir. A simple “hello” and “goodbye” before they separated again with a torrential recoil. Vladimir crashed into the enemy ship and let itself be embraced by the crumpling carnage of steel and flesh.

Seras’ piñata had popped in a most spectacular fashion, bursting with rancid treats. She could hear the Wild Geese begin to celebrate, all but leaping out the door to go and collect the spoils. The flames of the wreckage moved suspiciously, Seras noted. Some danced and flew regularly enough, while others… crawled. There shadows too were strange; they didn’t curl and swing as they should, but rather oozed and writhed. The fire had limbs, the shadows had eyes. And the eyes pointed to her.

“They’re not through yet!” Seras announced to the Manor.

“That’s right,” Pip continued with his eye on the ground’s monitors. “They’re not through yet, ladies. Keep your eyes peeled. They’re coming.”

The shadows began to pick themselves from the ground, and peeled away to reveal vampires. Disoriented, but otherwise completely healthy, vampires.

“They escaped just before they crashed,” a Goose cried in horror at the sight of them. “That’s impossible! They’re not even scratched!”

“That’s right,” Bernadotte said. “They aren’t human. They’re monsters.”

Seras watched the enemy take back their feet and enter formation. She could demented eyes crawling up her skin, trying to dig into her brain. “Captain…”

“Young lady,” Bernadotte said, turning his attention back to her. “You stand down and rearm.”

The Halconnen II had been spent. The ammo pack was empty, no more than dead weight now. Seras abandoned it, only holding on to the guns. They could keep a fair amount of ammunition on their own, and were effective rifles. “Yeah!” She hopped from the roof and made her way into the mansion.

“Just you watch, mon chère,” Bernadotte said wistfully, forgetting that Seras could still hear his rambling. “Let us show you how geese fight.”

As Seras sped through the halls to the ammo dump left for her nearby, she noticed the Wild Geese. They wore confident expressions, smiling and joking with one another. It seemed like they were unaware of the difference between this and a regular training session.

Bernadotte’s voice came piping over the manor intercom. “All right, the foreplay is over. Here they come, geese. It’s time to go to work. Rock n’ roll!”

* * *

 

Meanwhile, in the four-star hellscape that was London, Neku and Joshua were still arguing by killing ghouls and throwing portals. Ghouls at the very least didn’t have guns or a functional frontal lobe, so Neku didn’t need much help fighting them. Neku had fought Noise that were smarter than these things.

“You know Neku,” Joshua said nonchalantly from the air, “you’d think that you didn’t care that these all used to be people. Too many bad American horror movies?” He threw a couple portals in Neku’s direction, a new tactic he’d come up with to keep things exciting. They had the added bonus of gobbling up any matter they passed through and leaving the rest to suffer and die horribly. Joshua appreciated that.

“Shut up Joshua,” Neku said for the fiftieth time in the past thirty minutes. “Trying to focus.”

“But what if one of these poor zombies actually has a secret heart of gold? That one could have a sweet girlfriend back home waiting for him to bring home the dinner he caught and is currently being held by his makeshift pike.”

“Shut up Joshua.”

“Maybe they’re just misunderstood! They could be as afraid of you as you are of them. I remember hearing somewhere that zombies are actually voodoo slaves made from the bodies of people that were buried alive. Now does it seem fair to you that you should take the lives that they could be getting back?”

“Shut up Joshua.”

Joshua put his hand to his forehead and mocked a damsel’s cry. “They’re people! Have you no heart?”

“Not listening to you anymore!” Neku pushed aside a burning ghoul and let it fall. That one would die on its own.

Joshua smirked. “That’s what you said when I mentioned werewolves. I’m telling you Neku, it’s all one big conspiracy! They’re all working for the lizard men!”

“Hating you.”

“You know I’m adorable.” He looked down the road, swarming with fetid ghouls like ants over a used wad of gum. There were some scant explosions and bursts of elemental attacks in the distance, gracefully arching over the stained glass of a tiny church. “There are some Players over there. Probably guarding survivors in that church.”

“I noticed, thanks.”

“Still hate me?”

“Yes. But I’m sure I’ll get over it.”

“Heheh, you always do sweetheart.”

“Don’t push it.”

* * *

 

Seras was busy cleaning and reloading her trusty rifle, but she kept the window just behind her so she had a clear view of the enemy. The view was similar to watching a train jump off its tracks to come straight at you.

“Young lady,” Bernadotte’s voice crackled over her headset. “Vampires are what they are, right? Folks with inhuman reflexes and physical capabilities, possessing a beastlike thirst for blood and terrible strength. They can sense a human’s bloodlust, read their moves, escape their notice, and move sharp-footedly. They can avoid firearm and sword attacks easily, attack their opponent, and feast upon their blood, right?”

 _Well gee, when you put it like that it sounds like we’re all going to die,_ Seras thought. _Nice pep talk._

“Well, how does this sound?”

A noise like cannon fire shook Seras’ window, singular and echoing. Six more followed in quick succession. Then they erupted into a cacophony of explosions popping off like twisted bubble wrap. Seras turned back to the window to see the bursts of fire rise from their lawn and toss bodies like feathers in a breeze.

“Bingo,” Bernadotte said with a quiet smugness. “That’s what happens when you look down on humans.”

Seras approached the window, mouth agape at the spectacle. “Th-they set those traps?”

“Traps?” Bernadotte repeated as though she’d called a dog a tomato. “It’s the fools’ own fault for charging in here, head-on. They’re mindless, motionless, emotionless devices. And they aren’t single points, they’re a full-scale frontal attack. 60 claymore mines with blessed ball bearings, all detonated at the same time. Go ahead and dodge that, if you can. We’re not all that great at fighting, you see. It’s a messy affair, so we don’t come out and fight in the open, not like you soldiers.

“Third floor,” he continued, switching to intercoms. “Grenade volley. Rapid-fire shots! Lay down a line of fire! Don’t let them raise their heads up!” Seras gripped her clean and loaded rifle to her chest, and ran from the room. Time to rejoin the fight.

“A whole sheet of it!” The French voice of God carried through the halls over the assault. The grounds beyond had transformed into a dark lunar void, nothing but craters and fire. And still the attack kept coming. “Put down a full-scale attack! Rifle squads, concentrate all of your fire into a hail of bullets in one place at a time!”

The captains orders stopped, and for a while the monotony of explosions was all there was to hear. Seras was heading to the rifle squads so she could assist and snipe down any lingering targets that they couldn’t hit. The plan was sound, it would work. There was no gun or war strategy that could break through a barrage that Pip Bernadotte’s battle-torn mind concocted.

 _Hang on,_ a thought scratched at the back of Seras’ mind. _Didn’t that one guy from Rio have magic cards or something? Wouldn’t these guys have some kind of –_

Before the thought could even finish nagging her subconscious, the infinitesimal void of evil spat on the Hellsing lawn and all of Seras’ attention was drawn toward a malnourished Shoggoth forcing in on itself and crawling into the night sky. It boiled and contorted, a thing like out of a child’s nightmares. It grew color like crops upon its filmy surface, and eventually could be identified as something less open to the imagination. It was a man… wait no, those are breasts. That’s a giant woman.

_Holy shit, that’s a giant woman with a scythe._

In a past life Seras had taken pride in being two things: badass, and not terrifying to look at. She paid attention to her looks, and felt satisfied with the various aspects of her appearance while also being able to put criminals in a head lock and choke them out.

The giant woman was evidently more of a “choking out” kind of gal. The blanketing of body tattoos, the incredibly toned ab muscles, the shaved red hair. That one dead eye. It even had fish lips if you looked at it from the right angle.

Of course, Seras wasn’t one to judge. She was too occupied with scared out of her mind and being totally helpless as the Manor and the Wild Geese literally fell apart around her.

“Save me! My leg! My leg!”

“It’s a monster!”

“My arm! My… My arm!”

At some point Bernadotte came in. Seras hadn’t noticed, but for just an instant the sight of him brought some calm to her mind.

_Wait… that’s a giant woman with a scythe. That doesn’t make sense. That makes less sense than Reapers._

“It can’t be…” Doubts began to bubble up from her mind. Something was calling to her, trying to get her attention. The giant woman looked down at her with a bloody smile. “This isn’t happening… I don’t know what this is, but, there’s something inside me that’s telling me that…”

The world melted away, which was new for Seras. New didn’t have as much of an impact on her as it used to, but she felt a little better now that the threat of death wasn’t grinning at her with giant fish lips.

“I told you about the other eye inside your forehead, right?” A voice called out of the murky nothing. It was familiar, yet felt so distant. It had felt like years since Seras last heard his voice: Alucard. She tried to call out to him, but her mouth wouldn’t move. Her voice was nowhere. “That’s your third eye.”

She could sense him now. He was close, just in front of her face. If only she could move, she could bring him back. Alucard could kill the monster. Alucard would make everything better.

“Let go of your human eyes. They are a matter for humans. But you are no longer a human. You are not human.”

Third eye… Yeah, yeah a third eye. Psychic eye, super power, see everything. She needed to bring Alucard back. Alucard could win the war without even trying. Alucard could solve the problem.

Alucard.

_Alucard._

_Reece._

_Wait, who’s Reece?_

Seras’ eyes snapped open, and reality bent around her. The air reverberated and whispered to her in an alien tongue. Colors waved around her, flexing and showing off to appeal to her eyes. But those colors weren’t there; those alien tongues were nothing but the breeze.

“An illusion…?” She looked at her surroundings. The Manor was fine, there were no holes or cave-ins. “It’s an illusion!” The Wild Geese were completely unscathed as well, physically anyway. They were sprawled across the floor, crying in terror at a beast that wasn’t there and lost limbs that were still connected. “Snap to!” Seras tried to penetrate their hysteria. “Please, snap to! It’s just a vision! It’s a vision! An illusion!” She grabbed a soldier and shook him, but he was completely oblivious to her presence.

“Impossible!” Bernadotte backpedaled past Seras, panic imprinted upon his face. “This can’t be happening! There’s no way this can be!”

She grabbed his shoulders and tried to push him back into reality. “Captain, it’s an illusion! This is an illusion! Captain!”

Nothing. The men were all scared out of their minds, wetting themselves and praying to whatever God might feel appropriate to them. They still see a colossus with a scythe baring down on their small, fleshy bodies to tear out their souls. They saw only a monster about to kill them.

 _Fuck it,_ Seras thought. _Just fuck it! I’m a monster too, you David Copperfield bitch!_ She let go of Bernadotte and grabbed her gun. The red was simmering her brain again; it was listening to Seras more now. She propped herself against the window and let herself be influenced by the third eye, and unloaded in a general direction. It was crude sure, but she could feel her hands be led more and more towards a pinpoint spot. She spent nearly her entire payload, but finally something reacted: a burst of blood came from the colossi’s cheekbone, and slowly it disintegrated into the air like a burning sheet.

The giant was gone, and Seras assumed that would break the spell over everyone else. Sure enough they calmed down, if cautiously. She strode back to the still-shell shocked Bernadotte.

“Please, snap out of it!” she yelled at him again. “It was an illusion! It was witchcraft or something!”

Finally Pip noticed her presence. He looked down at her, which was slightly more than she expected. “Witchcraft?” he muttered. “You say it’s an illusion? That thing?!”

“Yes!”

Before the discussion could move any further things started busting through the windows. Two vampires had made it past the minefield and into the Manor. In the chaos before a counter could be made, the first chopped a man’s neck killing him instantaneously and the second carved out another’s torso. Seras grabbed her rifle and began a charge while another soldier’s jugular was torn out. She fired at the former vampire and blew out his brains, but the second slipped by her shots and leapt into the air above a fourth Goose and split his jaw like a python. Seras took the opportunity to shove the barrel of her gun down his throat and pop his head like a melon from the inside.

The blood hadn’t so much as hit the ground before the Manor rattled with detonations from the front. Seras got a brief glimpse of Nazis dashing over the grounds on the hilts of knives and firing RPGs at the front doors.

“This ain’t good,” Pip groaned. “We’ve lost the front quarter.” He leaned in slightly to his headset, likely received a report from the front. The gunfire was an endless cascade out the window, followed by more RPG fire and the sound of fragmenting wood. They were in.

“Gather our forces together,” Bernadotte addressed his company. “Those who have split off, take it slow, and pull back while fighting. All remaining soldiers, assemble here! Bring as much explosive and as many grenades as you can carry.” There was a slight shift in his mood; he bowed forward very slightly, as though it were an involuntary tick.

“Young lady…”

Seras perked back to attention. “Y-yes?”

“We’re going to barricade ourselves into this part of the building. We’ll take up defense, and young lady, you’re on offense. We will defend this place. While we do, young lady, you will dispose of them.”

 _This is weird,_ Seras thought. _He’s omitting something here._ “Y-yeah!”

Bernadotte smiled his same cocky smile. “You’re our ace in the hole, young lady. Take care of them. Before those guys cut us to ribbons.”

_He wants me to kill the entire enemy force? And leave them alone here? That’s not a – something’s touching my butt!_

She squealed and turned back with a heavy blush. A Goose was waving at her with the same hand he’d touched her with.

“We’re counting on you.” He spoke cheerfully, dismissive and oblivious to his own action. The other men laughed, again as though this was the most casual situation in the world. Seras couldn’t help but smile and be happy with them; their demeanor was so lax and comforting, it infected her. This wasn’t a problem, it would be easy. These guys know what they’re doing, and they trust her to keep them alive.

“R-right!”

“Oh. There’s one important thing I forgot!” Seras turned back to Bernadotte.

“SERAS!”

She jumped back. “Yes?!”

“CLOSE YOUR EYES!”

She shut her eyes in an instant and grit her teeth, unsure what to expect. It had caught her off guard and gave her no time to think. Then a second went by. Then two. She opened her eyes again, only to encounter Pip inches away from her face with puckered lips.

Surprise and disgust overcame Seras, and she recoiled with a light scream. “W-w-what are you doing?!”

A soldier approached Pip. “Captain, no fair!”

“Yeah, no fair!”

Pip turned away with a sizable blush. “All right, let’s go guys! Hurry!”

They wouldn’t let him escape that easily. “That’s abuse of power!”

An idea struck on of them. “Sweet! In that case…”

Suddenly Geese began to surround Seras, puckering their lips and demanding kisses. Her body lunged away from them in revulsion, and she screamed.

“Nitwits!” The soldiers immediately backed down with mischievous grins and cloying eyes.

Away from her murderous gaze, Bernadotte chuckled to himself. “Young lady Seras…” She turned back to him, cautious of another play on her innocence. “Don’t go dying, now. Don’t you die.”

Seras’ mind calmed as it heard the sincerity in his voice. It really sounded to her like he valued her life over anyone else’s. “Captain, and the rest of you…” The words escaped her. She could feel the Wild Geese’s entire force of love and respect at her back. It was nearly too much for her.

Bernadotte grinned, and her resolve strengthened tenfold. “All right, go on!”

She stood at attention. “Off I go!” The Geese parted before her as Seras ran down the passage toward the entrance, ready to kill anyone who would dare harm them. No bloody Nazi was going to hurt any more of her boys. She would kill all of them. Joshua wouldn’t be hunting her soul tonight, because she wasn’t about to die anytime soon.

She could smell smoke down the passage. There was the barrier to the entrance, where the first guard had made their stand. The scene beyond that was… gore. Unrecognizable bodies, most barely even still connected. The reflection of light on the seeping blood cast the room red. Seras could hear the distant battle chant of the enemy.

“Sturm! Sturm! Sturm!”

Her teeth grit as that old rage burst from her chest. Before now Seras was set on avenging everyone. Now though… now it was personal.

“Damn them!”

* * *

 

It was grueling work, but finally Neku forced his way through the hoard and joined the Players at the church. He could hear the panicked whimpering of civilians inside, and he wondered if they could see their protectors. Maybe they really thought that God himself was fighting off the unholy legion. But those were trains of thought for later, right now Neku would take to the rear and play healer for the exhausted London Players.

“Oh my God,” a boy said. “You’re the kid from the Eye! Hey guys, this is the one who fought two Reapers by himself and won!” Some of the Players turned to pay their respects, and morale boosted high enough for them to push back against the tides of corpses.

“We need to block them out!” a girl cried. “Does anyone have a rope pin or something?! We need defenses!” Neku turned to Joshua and glared. He rolled his eyes and tapped a few keys into his phone. Portals spread open above the roads and trucks rained down on the paths, crushing ghouls and barring any entrance. A cheer rose from the company and they began wiping out the stragglers.

“Better?” Joshua asked Neku with a frown. His eyes wandered passively over the bodies blanketing his surroundings. It was a bleak image to be sure, but after a while he settled on one particular spot. Neku traced his stare to a ghoul, weakly crawling over the corpses. It used to be a girl. Her skirt was stained brown and her blouse unruly, but he supposed she could have been pretty before. Joshua was still watching her.

Just then a spiraling ball of energy vaporized the ghoul’s head and spattered its guts over the complimentary bodies below it. The energy was pulled back by a string and landed in the hands of a very bright American girl.

“Yooo, Joshua! I thought I recognized that wicked hole trick!” Amy skated around the pile of gore and skid to a stop below him. He gave the dead girl one last glance and turned his attention to her, all smiles. “Man it is stellar to see you again!”

“Yeah,” Joshua responded. “It’s nice to see a familiar face.”

 


	12. Beloved and Frightful Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have finally reached episode 7 in terms of timeline!

Of all the colors of the rainbow, red was probably Seras’ least favorite at this point. It was hot and putrid, and it stuck to anything it touched. Red stuck to the halls of Hellsing Manor that she ran through. Red plastered the bodies of her fallen comrades. Red exploded out of her enemies when she fired the Hallconnen II. Red stung her eyes and burnt her skin. Seras choked on the color red.

At the same time, the Nazis imbibed red like refined treats. They were relaxing in pools of it, surrounded by eviscerated bodies and daring to communicate with each other as if they were still human beings. As if they were deserving of the title “people.” Seras and the Hallconnen did not agree with this.

The first one she killed was the one drinking from a severed arm. His head popped like a smashed keyboard, which made Seras feel a little better. She bore the Hallconnen II and unloaded on the unsuspecting vampires, raining down a volley of bullets and hot shells. Her third eye discerned another group approaching from behind. They tried to serpentine around her, to confuse her vision and ambush from all sides. But the Hallconnen was too fast, and her eyes too precise, and they all came crashing down in vile chunks. She pointed a cannon to the ground and erased the last feeble attempt at a surprise attack from the floor below.

Instants of noise and quiet came and went without much pomp or ceremony. One moment Seras’ attention was blinded by gunfire and screaming, the next she was alone with the bodies. The tortured expressions and eyes devoid of spirit. There was nowhere Seras could look where she wouldn’t be challenged with the death of someone she knew.

“I-I’ll take care of them.” It was time to move. Seras needed to move. She wouldn’t move.

“I’ll… I’ll… I’ll take care of all of them!”

_I’ll kill all of them!_

* * *

 

Annabelle King blazed through the London air, trailing flames wherever she went. She stole the fires of the Nazis to expand her own fire, to feed her monster. It screeched with sick delight and tore apart the vampires that they encountered. Annabelle had kept everything she stole from Seras, but there was one thing that Seras had given willingly: Annabelle’s Tamed Noise.

It was more than some simple ape or bird, and it was more controlled than Rocky’s tapewyrm. This Noise was a creature of dancing form, elegant and beautiful in its sway. It had no features or defining characteristic, and to the common eye seemed like no more than a burning shape. But Annabelle saw deeper, saw into the core of her pet. Its grace in fire spoke to her, and the two understood each other in battle. And the colors it burned were pleasing to any eye, and changed depending on the fuel: open air would burn yellow, while stone burnt a deep purple. Wood and foliage lit with a pleasing green, and clothe burnt white. Flesh, especially the flesh of the undead, burnt crimson.

The ghouls plaguing the earth proved so numerous, and so utterly useless, that after less than an hour of immolation her Noise was large enough to brighten a city block, and Annabelle abandoned killing them completely. The Players could clean them up, it wouldn’t be difficult. So she turned her attention to the roaming packs of vampires and found their brood more to her murderous pleasure.

She heard screaming and turned toward it without a moment’s hesitation, the Noise trailing behind her. Survivors were rare and precious, and Annabelle would not let a single one die under her guard. Composer King would never abandon her subjects.

In the distance she could make out the forms of humans alighting from rooftops. They were armed, and had succeeded in killing numerous vampires. Her Players wouldn’t be alone after all, that was relieving.

There below her was a small group of civilians. They were surrounded by ghouls and struggling to escape. A squad of vampires were weaving through the horde towards them at a break neck pace.

_No casualties allowed._

From the survivors’ perspective, the ghouls swarming them were eaten up by fire raining from the sky. The flames darkened and spread outward, circling the meager lives left, but not consuming them as well. Ghouls tried to push through the fiery barrier, turning to ash in an instant. Then there was a cavernous pounding, and body parts flew in to air around them as chunks of the horde were flattened into the ground. Guns fired from somewhere unseen, followed by panic and the squelching sound of flesh being cleaved from bone. And all the while the circle of flames devoured the ghouls.

A figure appeared in the fire. It was a woman, slender and white as a dove. Her raven hair danced with the lift of the fire, and her bright green eyes radiated mercy to the low survivors. She wore a glittering dress of pearly white with golden trim and purple laced.

“W-we’re saved!” a man cried out in adulation.

“An angel has come to save us!”

Annabelle smiled down on the people kneeling before her. She approached a man: his legs had been twisted beyond use and his shoulder had been partially eaten. With a ginger touch from Annabelle’s hand the bones snapped and cracked back into place, and his shoulder scabbed over and the skin regrew. The group was rendered speechless, astonished by the heavenly power.

Annabelle offered her hand to the healed man. It was runny with blood, scarred at the knuckle. The man took it with complete faith.

“Flee,” she said, and a path was opened to them, barred by fire. “Go into the underground shelters. A subway, a sewer, something below ground where the dead cannot find you. I shall protect you as you go.”

The men obeyed, limping down the road toward a visible manhole. One of them approached Annabelle, taking her hand and pressing his lips to her bloody skin.

“Thank you my lady,” he wept. “Thank you!” Annabelle touched his cheek, and he looked up at her. She glowed benevolently in the light of her fire.

“Go, and be safe.” She kissed his forehead and bid the group farewell. Once she was certain they’d escaped deep into the underground Annabelle called back her Noise and flew away to find another pack.

Those men believed they had seen the face of God that night.

* * *

 

  **BOOM!**

 _What was that?_ Seras thought. _There haven’t been any explosions in a while... Oh shit, it came from the Round Table!_ She took off down the passage, dual cannons in hand. There was no quick access to the bunker from where she was, and for all Seras knew the last of the Geese could be moments from death. In a spurt of quick thinking and third eye usage she stopped by a wall that pointed directly toward the Round Table. She could hear the Nazis just behind it.

“Do it!” It was a female voice, most likely the Copperfield bitch.

 _Fuck!_ She lifted the Hallconnen and unloaded into the wall only partially blindly. She heard the surprise and splattering of the enemy soldiers as the wall fell away under her fire. Before long she could see quite clearly: the destroyed barrier, the caked blood, the gore. As the smoke cleared and the shells settled, Seras saw her: the woman with the scythe, now regular sized but just as ugly.

“Direct cannon support?” the Nazi gawked. “It’s you!” Seras stared her down, putting on an air of intimidation. She strained her ears, trying to pick up movement in the bunker. Sure enough she heard voices. Bernadotte’s voice.

“Yeah, she’s here, as promised,” he said. “Our girl is really here, to single-handedly kill all the monsters. Ah, damn it. What a hell of a fine girl she is, that’s for damn sure. I should have kissed her, by force if I had to.”

 _Heh, stupid Captain,_ Seras thought. She relished the compliment for a brief moment, then returned to the conflict at hand. The Hallconnen was lighter than ever now; she tested the triggers. Nothing. They were empty. She spared her mechanical ally a short glance and silent gratitude before removing the straps and letting it fall. Her shoulders had nearly forgotten the sensation of not having the weapon weighing them down.

Zorin grinned maniacally as the cannons dropped. Already she could feel her victory.

“Seras… Seras Victoria!”

 _Great, more people who know my name. Fuck it, whatever._ “You’re the only one left!”

Zorin was unfazed. She switched her weapon to her other hand. “So what if I am?!” An eye gored Seras’ vision for a brief instant and vanished as Zorin slammed her hand into the ground. The tattoos covering her body began to squirm and crawl away, demonic languages slithering along the floor, the walls, the air itself. The darkness gave way to the Dark, and Seras lost herself.

She knew what it was immediately and activated her third eye to counteract it, but found the effect weak. This wasn’t as spread out as the colossus, influencing over a dozen minds at once. This was aimed, precise, invasive, and very personal.

“It’s an illusion,” Seras reminded herself. “An illusion! It’s not real, it’s an illusion! It’s an illusion!”

Seras shut her eyes as tightly as she could to block Zorin out, but still she could see. Fragments and shadows sputtered in her vision. The mud of the past clung to her skin and dug itself into her pores, forcing its way into her flesh. The past spoke brashly and irritably into her mind.

“Seras is causing more problems, is she?”

“Yes. When one of the boys took away a toy from her, she hit him with a rock.”

 _That’s not what happened,_ Seras’ child mind spat ruefully. She shook herself, trying to force herself away. “It’s an illusion! It’s an illusion!” Still the shades talked on.

“She hasn’t taken to any of the other teachers one bit. The effects of the incident must still be hard on her.” _Shut up…_

“Still, if she causes any more difficulty, this orphanage will no longer be able to look after her.” _I never wanted to be here!_

She steadied herself; it was the past, it was nothing. There was no power there, it couldn’t affect her if she didn’t let it. Seras forced herself out of her young body. “Don’t let her rattle you.”

Zorin’s voice penetrated the darkness, echoing off the boundaries of the world. “Go deeper…”

The vision was flung forward to a new place, similar yet changed with the rot of time. A new shade stood before Seras, and this one spoke to her directly.

“Why do you want to be a police officer? Can’t you think of any other path for yourself?”

“No.” Seras’ lips tore themselves away from her mouth and spoke for her. Her tongue wrapped itself around her wind pipe to keep her from speaking; the memory played on despite her.

“You’re too stubborn. Sure your father was a fine policeman. But you have many other possibilities. It’s almost as though you’re squandering your chances.”

Seras’ body was fighting against her. She tried to pull her legs off the ground, but they kicked her away. Her hands attempted to remove her constricting tongue, but only tightened the grip. Her skin cracked and opened to absorb the infinite Dark, swallowing Seras’ flesh and folding her into a neat little child’s body. She was being pushed farther and farther back.

_It’s just a vision…_

Zorin’s giddy voice called out to her again. “Go even deeper…”

It was dark, and cramped, and Seras could feel a cobweb against her hair. But Seras didn’t care. Not now.

In a final moment of control she pushed a guttural scream out of her chest, a last cry for help. But it was useless. Her body stole her away and dragged her back, back to the most horrible chasm of evil and death. It was all there, in brutal vivid detail. No shades, no mud. Just the agonizing moment in history.

***Bang!***

“Oy, piggy piggy, whazza matter?”

“You were just for fun!”

Something in her hands. Gouging flesh, spurting blood. Something exploded in Seras’ gut.

“That filthy little cunt!”

*Squish squish squish*

It was too awful. *squish squish squish* Seras couldn’t take it. *squish squish squish* She wanted to die, she wanted to put a gun to her head and die. *squish squish squish* Anything to end that awful, awful noise!

*Crunch*

_What?_

A man had pushed the attacker’s head down through his body. His skull had shattered and flesh flopped onto the hardwood floor. His spine slid out with a sickening noise and folded over limply. The man kicked his dead body across the room to the second attacker.

The man was enraged, crimson and bulging at every angle. His hand was caked in blood, as well as his hooded jacket. Seras recognized those stains, and she recognized that jacket. She recognized the anger, and the power, and, eventually, the man himself.

_Reece… that’s Reece. His name is Reece. He was wearing that jacket on the rooftop. He would always wear it outside… outside of…_

The second attacker pulled out his gun, but it fell to pieces in an instant. Reece was there now, right on top of him. With a single backhanded slap the attacker’s head rolled across the room. And then Reece picked up Seras’ stolen body. She felt his giant arms cradle her, and she felt the pain in her stomach ebb away. His face looked down at her, sad and consoling. Seras knew his eyes. They were her eyes.

She’d seen his eyes before, in her bedroom. He’d knelt before her, he devoted himself to her while she was half asleep and in her pajamas. He’d taken her to London with a snap of his fingers, and showed her a secret floor that did not exist to the living.

Reece was dead. Reece was a ghost? A Player? A Reaper? No… a Producer. He’d shown her the Reapers. Malcolm… Oni. The man on the roof… Bobby. Richard. Megan. Rocky. Anna –

Annabelle stood before Seras’ throne. She had only just escaped from the orphanage for the night and was occupied reviving the winning Players. They had not chosen to become Reapers. At times Seras forgot they could do that. She didn’t notice Annabelle for a few minutes. The Reaper stood and waited quietly, her expression empty and unreadable.

When the children had been successfully resurrected Seras noticed her. “Oh, hi Anny,” she said happily, if a little surprised. “Did you want something?”

“Oh no, not really,” Annabelle replied with a curt smile. “I just thought I’d check up on our young Composer, that’s all. Much has happened, and I understand the work load can be a bit… weighty. What with all those souls.”

“Oh, well thank you,” Seras smiled warmly. “But I’m all right, really.”

Annabelle took a few steps toward the throne. “Are you sure? Adult souls can be very complicated, I wouldn’t want you to feel overwhelmed.”

“No really, it’s okay,” Seras insisted. “I know what I’m doing now! I can actually send them a lot faster than when I started.”

“Really?” Annabelle smirked. “Show me. I’ll be silent so I won’t distract you.”

With a shrug and a humorous smile Seras opened up the soul queue and went to work. Not many people had died that week fortunately, mostly elderly people. There were a couple car accidents and one tragic murder-suicide that stumped Seras for a while, but in the end she sorted them all out and sent them to the Ferryman (whom Seras had customized to be a cute little happy bear). She closed the window and looked up at Annabelle, who was now leaning on the throne.

“See?” Seras said, pleased with herself. “I know what I’m doing!”

Annabelle nodded quietly, contemplating. “What about the couple?”

“Umm… I mean you saw where I went them…”

“Yeah. To Hell. Why?”

“Um…” Seras readjusted her seat, slightly nervous. “Mr. Gab was… you know… cheating. And his wife caught him and… umm…”

“Killed him and shot herself,” Annabelle finished coldly. “I got that. Why did you send the husband to Hell?”

“Well he was cheating on his wife!” Seras said with more confidence. “I think that’s a pretty good reason.” Annabelle didn’t speak at first. She backed away from Seras, just enough so she was sure she could see every millimeter of scorn on her face.

“He fucked a girl and was murdered, so you send him to Hell for eternity?”

Seras recoiled slightly. “N-no, that’s not what happened…”

“He cheated once, and didn’t even get the opportunity to feel guilty because some psycho bitch blew his brains out the next day.”

“W-well I guess, but he still –“

“How the fuck is that fair to him? One misstep and eternal damnation? What are you, a bloody Catholic from the middle ages? Is this how you treat everyone who dies?!”

Seras was beginning to cry now. “B-but he wasn’t even a good man! He stole and hurt people and lied and a bunch of other stuff!”

Annabelle scoffed. “Sure, some minor infractions. Big fucking deal. Does stealing a stapler from work warrant being tortured by demons? And if he was so bad, why burn the wife? She seemed just fine, but because of a crime of passion she gets the same punishment as her asshole husband?”

“I-I-I try my best…”

“TRY?!” Annabelle punched the stone wall behind her, cracking both the stone and her hand. “YOU TRY?! THESE ARE PEOPLE’S ETERNITY SERAS! YOU HAVE TO DO BETTER THAN TRY!

“The Composer is equal to a god in his city, you even more so because of this Heaven and Hell shit! Are you even worthy of that? Clearly you can’t handle these two, how many other lives have you fucked up? How many flawed yet innocent people have you sent to Hell? How many evil monsters have you allowed to live it up in Heaven?”

“NONE!” Seras stood from the throne, face drowning in tears. Annabelle’s words stung, and they were digging in. Doubt berated Seras’ mind and crumbled her heart.

Annabelle saw the weakness. Her eyes lit with a pestilent green, and she smiled down at the trembling girl. She took a step and stood between Seras and the throne. Its cold allure called to her. Her fingers twitched with greed, but she could not snatch yet. She had to make sure no one could contest her.

The Reaper met her Composer’s eyes, and whispered three little words:

“Are you sure?”

Seras ran. She busted down the door and ran. She found herself in the orphanage, and ran. The children were startled awake by the sounds of her weeping, but when they appeared to look she had already left. Seras ran down the playground and blew down the fence. She ran down the road as fast as her legs could carry her, leaving tears to muddy the earth. A stone caught her feet and she fell to the ground. Seras lay there, crying and crying, thinking of all the poor people she must have condemned in her stupidity. The pendant Reece had given her burned against her chest.

Footsteps approached Seras’ prone form. She wiped away the layer of tears to see who had followed her.

Annabelle swung the HQ key around her finger. “You left the door open. Not smart. You could have given us away.”

Words failed to sputter from Seras’ throat. She wanted to apologize, to beg Annabelle to help her with next week’s souls. She craved redemption, to be saved from this horrible pain.

“You’re pathetic Victoria,” Annabelle spat down at her. “You aren’t worthy of your power. Haha, do you know how long I’ve wanted to say that? How long I’ve looked at the worthless little girl playing princess and telling me what to do?” She grimaced. “I’ve hated you since I first set eyes on you, and you have done nothing but cement that hatred. Give me that!”

Annabelle grabbed Seras’ neck and tore the pendant from her struggling hands. Seras tried to plead, or fight, or anything, but the pendant was gone and she couldn’t use it.

“You didn’t deserve this anyway. I did. This,” she waved the golden trinket in her hand, “should have been mine!”

“W-w-why…”

“Shut up!” Annabelle kicked her back to the ground. “Shut your sodding mouth!” She reared her foot back for another strike, but held it there. Annabelle steadied herself.

“No, no… I can’t kill you. You’ll just come back tomorrow in the Game and tell the others what happened. Nooo…” She grinned and brought up her hand. It glowed with a sinister power. “I can’t kill you, but I can make sure you never come back.”

Everything went black. Seras panted on the ground, sticky with tears and sweat. She heard a voice, unfamiliar at first, off in the distance.

“Good morning, Miss Seras. Did you have pleasant dreams?”

 _Wha-?_ Seras jolted back to her true adult form right when the blade sliced up her armpit and straight through the bone. Between the pain and the panic she barely had the sense of self to look at the wound, much less react.

“One more!” Zorin cried in jubilation. “One more!” A swing of her scythe and Zorin carved a path straight through Seras’ torso. She fell off the blade, blood quickly pooling around her body. The strike had missed her heart, she was still alive. Maybe she could escape. If she could just crawl away…

Laughter taunted her feeble survival instinct. “You’re a tough chick!” A boot slammed into the back of her head, nearly cracking it. “What are you, an insect? A frog?” The pressure left, only to be replaced by a tight grip. Zorin raised Seras to her knees and leveled her blade.

There was a sharp, terrible pain, and the most complete darkness. Seras was left to drop and scream. There was nothing now. Just the bitter smell of iron, the stick of cold blood, and the sound of Zorin.

“What is this? You’re not at all what they told me you’d be. You’re trash. A big sloppy mess.” Seras didn’t have it within herself to even think a retort. Her mind was screaming. What little attempt at escape she had left was quickly stifled by Zorin’s boot.

“Now then, it’s about time for you to die. I think I’ll slice off that head of yours.” Seras’ ears were all she had left to judge the scene. Hell, pretty soon she wouldn’t have anything. Something moved through the air. Running foot falls.

“Die!”

“Shut up, you hag!” It was Bernadotte, sure enough! He hit Zorin with something, and they were fighting. Consciousness flickered from Seras, but she struggled to remain aware. Maybe she could do something… anything…

“Have some more!” Bernadotte fired his gun. Did he still have blessed rounds? It was impossible to tell. A body fell a few meters away. “Chill, you ugly troglodyte.” _Heh, Captain. I wish I came up with that earlier…_

Someone threw smoke grenades. Two other voices appeared. “Hurry, Captain!” Another: “This way! Hurry, Captain!” Wild Geese had survived. Seras couldn’t quite tell who, but they’d survived. She hadn’t completely failed.

“You got it,” Bernadotte said. He lifted Seras onto his back, exacerbating the myriad wounds she was dripping blood from.

“Captain… Berna…”

“Don’t try to talk.” They started to move, slowly. The effort was clearly hard on the Captain. His breathing was sporadic and blood gushed onto the ground. Seras hoped it was her blood. Suddenly more gunfire ringed out from behind them. It pierced flesh just below Seras. “Damn it…!”

“Mr. Bernadotte… r-run! You’ve done enough, Mr. Bernadotte…”

“I told you to keep quiet!” The two Wild Geese opened fire on the enemy behind them, and seemed to take him out. They continued on the slow path onward, blood oozing from their wounds. Seras was beginning to lose consciousness now, and she didn’t try to fight it so hard. They seemed safe now, they could get patched up. Joshua and Neku could even be on their way back right now. _Fuck, we could’ve used them earlier._

Then, in an instant, Bernadotte stopped. Something had come through the air and impaled him. _Oh God… Oh God…!_ She felt blood burst out of his back, and the two fell. Now Seras was completely disoriented.

“You trash…!” Zorin’s voice. Those were regular bullets, she was still alive! “You scum, trying to be a hero…!”

Seras forced herself off the ground, straining her ears for something. A grunt, a breath, anything. “Mr. Bernadotte…? Mr. Bernadotte!”

“Dumb—Dumbass…!”

There he was. “Mr. Bernadotte!”

He was… laughing. Laughing without much humor in his voice. “If you came to save me, and I… I end up saving you… we’re screwed, huh…?” The metallic clink of a lighter was to her left. He was right there! She reached out desperately, hoping for anything, and found his leg. She gripped his pants as hard as she could and pulled herself closer.

“Mr. Bernadotte…” She forced herself up, just trying to get to him. Was he still alive? She needed to know.

Suddenly, Seras felt a gloved hand grab her head. It pulled her closer and closer, until her lips met his. She tasted his blood and hers mix in their mouths. It took her a moment to realize what was happening, and when she did she felt… a little better. Her grip relaxed and she felt his chest, felt his heartbeat quicken. His unshaved face scratched at her, but she didn’t mind. Seras allowed herself to give up in his embrace. She kissed him back.

When it ended, Bernadotte was laughing again. And coughing now as well. “That’s what you get more not paying attention. Hahahaha, I finally stole a kiss from you.” The joy in his voice, that desperate joy that a person only feels when they’re on the edge, made Seras break inside. He was dying.

“B-Ber—“

“Hey, don’t cry, Seras.” There was serenity in Pip’s voice. Finality even. “You’re a tough girl, ain’t you? Now devour me. Devour me, and let’s get her, together, Seras.”

Seras reached forward to touch him, to hit him for even suggesting something so stupid, and found nothing but a slimy wall. _No…_ She followed it to the ground and felt his body. He’d fallen. She grabbed his jacket and struggled to pull him back up, but only lost her balance. So she crawled over him instead, crawled to find his face. There it was. She wrapped her arm around his shoulder and picked him back up. She held him in her arm, trembling. Was he still alive…?

No.

Pip Bernadotte was now only a corpse.

Seras looked to the sky with blinded eyes and wailed. She wept with and cried tears of blood. Tears were shed for Bernadotte, a perverted, murderous asshole that she loved. Tears were shed for the Wild Geese, men she’d hardly known but had given their lives to make her feel confident. Seras lamented the deaths of all these good, honorable men. Her heart was filled with regret. She could do nothing but hold his head as close to her body as she could.

Just outside of her wails, Seras could hear Zorin. She didn’t understand a word, and couldn’t find it in herself to care. They were dead. Pip was dead. She was dead. Joshua could come for her soul in Hell, she didn’t care. Maybe that was even what she deserved at this point. Seras might as well just die and let the world crumble.

“Such is the end for the life of an insect!”

… Seras stopped. Her mind stopped with a clunk, rendered immobile. Her ears stopped and heard nothing. Her breath stopped, and for the first time in hours she couldn’t smell all the blood. Her body had frozen and melded with the corpse of Pip Bernadotte.

 _Such is the end for the life of an insect!_ The gears of her mind began to spin, and they spun around this thought. _Such is the end for the life of an insect!_ She began to comprehend the world again. Panic. Screams. Blood. Death. _Such is the end for the life of an insect!_

“You called him an insect,” Seras realized aloud, stopping the room. “Didn’t you? You called him a bug, didn’t you? You’ll pay for this.”

_The Reapers._

“You’ll pay for this!”

_Reece._

“You’ll pay for this…”

_The Wild Geese._

“YOU’LL PAY FOR THIS!”

_Bernadotte. Let’s finish this together._

Seras raised her head, laid bare her fangs, and bit into Bernadotte’s neck to take the blood he’d given her. And that blessed blood succumbed to her, it rushed to her mouth and embraced her as a lover would. Every ounce that had spilt rushed to be by her side, to take its place within her body. It was still warm, and she could feel it coursing through her dead and empty veins. What little blood Seras had taken from Integra was purged, and the old sludge that was Seras’ blood became revitalized by the warm ambrosia of Bernadotte. Something within the blood took the place of her arm, blocking and healing the wound. Seras could feel the liquid gore filling her eye sockets, recreating what was lost. She took her mouth away from Pip’s flesh and urged her eye lids to open.

The red was back, and burning bright. It shattered what pathetic illusion Zorin had conjured without effort. The phantasms fell around her, broken like glass. Finally she could see the body of Bernadotte, sliced up and empty. What was left of the man was now inside of her.

“Off I go, Captain Bernadotte.” She looked up to face Zorin; reinforcements had arrived at some point. Their eyes were on her. Their eyes… were afraid. “Off I go.” She tested her strange new appendage: blood tendrils, much like what she’d seen her master Alucard use. A Familiar as an arm, and it was powerful. She could feel the strength in it. “Off I go!”

The vampires were struck, watching the spell fall away. It was all fake, a weak lie. Seras was real. Bernadotte was real.

“Together we go. Together we get… we get those guys!” Seras didn’t even need to smell fear, she could see it in their eyes. In their sweat and their movements they cried. Now their lives, their souls, were forfeit.

Seras barely began to charge, and the Nazis began spraying bullets at her. Their aim was precise and remarkably steady, and she dodged every bullet with ease. She destroyed an armored vampire with a single punch. The rest were but toys for Bernadotte to play with. Now Seras could let go and give in to the flow of violence, the dance of Death that she’d resisted for so long. Her movements were swift, and with a touch the enemy was sliced to pieces. She danced through the air carved them into cubes, and she crushed their bodies with rage-fueled strikes. A platoon of undead zombies, armed to the teeth just to be redundant, were decimated within seconds.

And then Seras took Zorin’s face in hand and ground her into the floor boards. The two slid down the hall, blood tracing their way, as Seras crushed the Nazi woman’s skull between her fingers. In a plea for escape Zorin tightened her fist hard enough to shatter stone and fold steel, and punched Seras in the face. She did this again, and again, and still Seras did not loosen her grip. Out of sheer annoyance she reared her maw and bit off Zorin’s fingers, and then spat them out in contempt.

“I am not about to drink one drop, one speck, one microliter of your blood! I won’t do it! I won’t do it!” With every word her fingers dug into Zorin’s brain that much more. The back of her head splattered against the floor, and she was nearly out of options. There was only one tactic left for Zorin that could save her now, and she did not hesitate to use it. With what little energy she still contained she brought up her arm and enclosed Seras’ face within her hand, a direct line between their brains. Seras’ hand fell away, and Zorin laughed as one does when they narrowly escape death.

“Deeper… deeper… deeper… even deeper… even deeper… even deeper!”

But Zorin could go no deeper, and became silent. Seras was unaware of the struggle going on insider of her, but she knew who was fighting on her side. And she had faith that her side would win out.

Zorin did say one word though. “Schrodinger!” Odd choice of final words, but Seras wouldn’t judge. She would instead reach past Zorin’s arm and finish what she started.

Seras grabbed her head and slammed it into the wall. After a few moments to relish the pressure and pain she would inflict upon her, Seras began to run.

“Away with you!” she yelled. “Out of my presence! Out of my mind!”

She ran as fast as she could, pressing Zorin’s ugly head into the wall just hard enough so that it wouldn’t break through. Sparks flew from burning bone, gore trailed their progress. Seras could see the air rushing past Zorin’s head as her face became thinner and thinner. Her eye was gone, and soon so was most of her nose. When her own fingers reached the wall she stopped, and with a last cry of rage she threw the twisted corpse down to the ground. Blue flame erupted out of what was Zorin Blitz, and devoured her. Seras was satisfied… mostly.

She turned and left it to burn away. At the end of the corridor were the two last Wild Geese. Seras recognized them now, though she couldn’t bring herself to greet them. Bernadotte’s old body lay at their feet, and she looked at it one last time. She felt that Bernadotte was bidding his old home farewell from within her.

The light of dawn touched Seras’ cheek, and she turned to face it. The night was not over quite yet, but it was retreating. There was still one more conflict left to fight. Now that Seras remembered, she had to go back. She had to find Reece and Oni and all the others, and she had to get back what was stolen from her, just like Joshua came to make her do.

“I’m off,” she said to the last two, very simply.

“You’re off? Where are you going?”

 _They couldn’t understand._ “I made a promise to the captain, that we would get them.” It wasn’t technically a lie: Seras had every intention of slaughtering every Nazi she saw on the way to Reece. And Annabelle, eventually. Maybe not tonight, but soon. She turned back and smiled. “Which is why I’m going off now, to get them.”

“Oh…” Seras turned away now, ready to go. For the first time she noticed just how much blood Bernadotte had given her: it literally dyed her clothes. She giggled internally at the man’s fashion statement, and she felt him mock being hurt. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so different from before.

“Hang on a second.” She regarded the two men, and was encountered with their standing salute. “Yes, sir!”

The other one joined in this. “Sir!”

Warmth flooded Seras' heart, both her own and their Captain's. She smiled and nodded, and then took off from the window into the open air. Her blood tendrils shook and bent, reforming into demonic wings. Seras and Bernadotte took flight together, as one, and sped toward the dead city.

The sun caught her eyes and blinded her for a moment. In her mind's eye she saw the Reapers towering over her, smiling affectionately. She remembered the Reece's supporting touch, Oni's drunken laughter, Richard's grand stature, and Megan's sympathetic eyes. Seras remembered Rocky and his undying loyalty and obedience to her Games, and Bobby's... Bobby's...

 _Oh God..._ Seras came to a halt in the sky. She stifled chokes of despair with her remaining hand as her eyes started to water. _Bobby... What have I done?_

Annabelle's figure suddenly cut itself into Seras' mind. She had always carried herself so well, with a calming smile and a firm dedication. Seras remembered Annabelle being kind to her, caring for her, playing with her.

_"I've hated you since I first laid eyes on you."_

Seras' hand tightened into a fist, and her teeth ground together. Anger began to swell within her bosom. _She tricked me,_ Seras thought spitefully. _She BETRAYED me. Annabelle stole everything from me! Oni, Richard, Megan, Rocky, Bobby, Reece, everyone I cared about! She stole the only good thing I had and told me I deserved it! That dirty bitch!_ Seras remembered Annabelle holding her after her parents died. Seras remembered Annabelle beating and abandoning her.                

"I'll kill her," Seras swore. "I will kill her!" She continued moving, determined to find Integra and end the slaughter. The sooner this battle was won, the sooner Seras could finish the battle she had been forced to forget.

  
  



	13. Prelude To Climax

_Most of the living have been extinguished. A few tremble underground. Hardly even morsels to sate me._

_Ate most of the Players, a few corpses as well. Weak weak weak._

_I need a hardier meal._

* * *

"Okay, so he has these super slick shades and awesome blonde hair, but absolutely no babes in town are into him! And here I am thinking 'Here's the coolest guy within a million miles, and he doesn't get ANY?!' I mean come on, Johnny's big enough to suplex a bear if he wanted to! That's hot as hell."

Joshua chuckled at Amy's ramblings. "Your American cartoons are so bizarre."

"Hey man, your Japanese cartoons ain't much better. I've seen Sailor Moon; that shit is the most boring fru-fru shit I've ever seen!"

"What about Mobile Suit Gundam?"

"The fuck is a Gundam?"

Neku and Brad sat further down the sidewalk, feeling thoroughly embarrassed. The barricades Joshua set up were effectively keeping out the ghouls, giving all the Players time to rest and recover from their wounds. Most didn't utter a sound.

"Your friend is really into old cartoons," Neku commented. "She must have named three different shows that I've never heard of."

"Yeah," Brad sighed. "I don't know about any of that, I don't watch TV much. Amy's always tried to see everything, including kid's stuff."

Neku raised an eyebrow. "So you can talk like a normal person."

"Huh? Oh, haha, yeah. Whatever trend Amy gets into, she usually drags me into with her."

"Is her current phase 'Fresh Prince of Belair' couture?" Neku grinned at Brad, who just looked perplexed. "Ah, no TV, right. Anyway, you don't have to do whatever she does you know. You can be your own man, I'm sure she'll respect you more for it."

Brad shrugged. "Amy's been my best friend since we were little. It's always been this way. Grouping up with her IS me being my own man, it's what I know."

"Mmhmm. And what if she isn't around for you to copy?"

"Never happened."

"It could."

"It won't."

Neku chuckled. "Well now you're just jinxing yourself. Trust me man, you're going to want to build your own spine. Isn't independence the most important thing in America or something like that?"

"And isn't codependence how Japan runs itself? A bunch of people playing the same roles for their entire lives to make the country run?" Neku scowled, which Brad took as confirmation.

"I guess we're both a little anti-establishment," Brad ended with some satisfaction. "I'm sure you have your friends and dependencies, just like I have my own thoughts and opinions. But in the end we're still not quite what everyone else wanted us to be."

"What are you, my fucking psychologist? You wanna talk about my mom next?"

"Nope. I just want the week to end so Amy and I can get on the first plane back home. Fuck the Reaper Game."

 _Well there's something we can agree on._ Neku stood up, tired of loafing around. He looked through the church windows to see how the survivors were holding up. There were barely over a dozen inside: some were kneeling before the cross and praying for their eternal souls, while others were weeping and lying catatonic in the pews. Neku wondered if they could see the Players outside, or if they saw only him. Neku thought he should put on a more confident air, just in case they looked outside to see him.

He turned back to see the Players. They weren't holding up any better than the people they were protecting. These kids had seen more death than the average war veteran. Their number had decreased notably, and the ones remaining looked like they'd been beaten into the dirt. The morale they'd gained from Neku's arrival had crumbled away in the past few hours with each vampire attack. He'd eventually learned the truth about how the Players had fared before his and Joshua's arrival: Amy killed three quarters of the ghouls with her skates and yoyo while all the rest were systematically slaughtered and devoured. When the ghouls were blocked off and only vampires could attack, Neku and Amy would hold them off while Joshua and Brad played support. All the Players barely managed to avoid being mauled.

The wailing of a young girl betrayed the fate of her elder brother. A teen boy clutched a torn and bloody leather jacket to his chest in silent despair. A few haggard teams huddled around a bonfire. A couple embraced each other, barely holding in their own panic for the sake of the other. All the Players that had freaked out had already escaped to outside the barrier before anyone could stop them. Neku had no doubts about what became of them.

And off to the side was Joshua and Amy, discussing decades-old anime. There was Brad, sitting perfectly calm, thumbing through CDs and cassette tapes.

And there was Neku, judging them. He sighed and berated himself. Joshua's old words passed through his mind:

" _Understanding other people isn't hard… It's impossible."_

Someone tapped his shoulder. Neku turned and faced Joshua, who wordlessly pointed toward the sky. Neku followed his indication and looked up to see a winged red figure zoom past them. Yellow hair coursed behind the figures back, and Neku spotted a telltale jiggling.

"Was that Seras?"

"Definitely," Joshua said.

Neku thought. "She left the Manor. Why would she leave the Manor?"

"It was probably overrun. I can't imagine there are any survivors left there."

"Well, she made it out. That's good at least." He looked at Joshua, who was still gazing up at the sky. His face was crooked and wrinkled in distress, like a spider just bit him and he wasn't sure if it was poisonous. "What is it?"

Joshua's eyes turned to Neku. "That idiot girl drank blood, Neku. She's a fully-fledged vampire. Which means we're officially fucked."

* * *

Any ounce of sunlight that might have waned against Seras' power had been hidden away by the smoke of London. It seemed like the fires were unquenchable, devouring more and more of the helpless city. Off in the distance Seras could see white phosphorous raining from helicopters like mock-angels, and the raving madness of Maxwell. As much as she wanted to go knock them out of the sky, Seras' first duty was to Hellsing. She had to find Integra and confirm her safety; after that would come the Reapers.

Seras heard yelling from a nearby alleyway. The accent and zealously religious tone were unmistakable: Alexander Anderson, Iscariot's war dog. He was the best lead she could have to Integra's location Seras could get.

In fact, he was the only lead she needed. There was Integra, caught in a circle of fire arms held by Iscariot soldiers.

"No, I do not like this," Anderson growled.

A younger man Seras had never seen replied. He was likely the second in command, or perhaps Anderson's apprentice. "It is not a matter of whether you like it or not, Anderson."

"I don't like this!" Anderson repeated. Then he looked up, as though he could sense Seras' presence, as she dived down into the fray and swept away the men cornering Integra. The sheer ease of it was astounding to her: over a dozen bodies, easily one thousand kilograms, tossed aside like pebbles. She couldn't help but smile from satisfaction, but made herself serious again when the enemy could see her.

"Seras!" The second exclaimed.

"Seras Victoria!" A nun with a sword finished. _Sodding hell, I'm developing a reputation aren't I?_ Seras thought to herself.

"Are you injured, Miss Integra?" Seras asked, keeping her eyes to Iscariot. The paper soldiers may be worthless, but Anderson and his two pets could be a serious problem if they decided they really wanted Integra. However, based on what he said not moments ago, Seras suspected Anderson wouldn't try anything.

"I'm fine. How is headquarters?"

"We were attacked by a company of enemy soldiers. We eliminated the enemy." The memories of gore appeared in Seras' mind. "Headquarters has been wiped out." Her face softened with a note of sadness. "Including Mr. Bernadotte."

A breath of smoke tickled Seras' hair. "I see, you don't say," Integra replied almost apathetically. "Seras, you drank Bernadotte, huh? You've become a vampire, haven't you?" There was a note of sympathetic pride in her tone. She didn't seem to care about headquarters, or the dead mercenaries. She cared more that Seras had finally imbibed blood.

Seras took a moment to consider this before responding. She turned her head and smiled. "Y-yes." Practically the instant Seras turned, the two Catholic pets pointed their weapons at her.

"Stand down," Anderson ordered before either side had a chance to strike. "The girl is already too much for you to handle, even if you ganged up on her." Seras met the Father's eyes. "Seras Victoria, the vampire… you are starting to become something quite fearsome."

She found herself smiling. It likely wasn't meant to be a compliment, but Seras smiled all the same. "Yes, I am, Father Alexander Anderson. I am not afraid of anything anymore." Out of anyone's sight, something moved in the shadows. A silent gasp, an immobile recoil, hidden away from perception.

"Your eyes look like they go down to the bottom of the abyss," Anderson stated. "What a state to be in, for someone who looks so human."

Suddenly the atmosphere of London, England trembled in fear. Darkness passed through its borders, unnatural and reeking of death. Seras and Anderson turned simultaneously as it crept over them and filled their pores with oozing evil.

Seras smiled again. "H-he is… returning!" Master Alucard had entered the harbor, dressed in blood and fog. Integra closed her eyes and smoked away with a relieved grin. All was in her hands now.

Anderson laughed lightly. "This is fantastic," he spoke from the violent devil in his soul. "It all goes awry now."

Oni and Richard stopped in their tracks. "What the fuck is that?" Oni breathed, looking into the air.

"The devil," Richard said, tightening his grip on his sword. "Beelzebub comes upon us with the key to the Gates of Hell in his wicked grasp."

"Woah," Oni said, laughing nervously. "Slow down Dante. That seems a little far-fetched, even for tonight. It's probably just some strong vampire or something, nothing Anny or Mr. Nayake couldn't handle."

A shadow was cast over Richard's stony face. "We should go find Megan and Rocky. Quickly."

"Y-yeah," Oni nodded. "Strength in numbers.

Composer King and her fiery Noise stood contemplative over a mound of corpses. "A new vampire. A real vampire. It's announcing its arrival to its spawn like some king." She turned to her Noise and looked into its burning essence. "We should kill it before it sniffs out the survivors underground."

"What's up Joshua?" Neku asked. Joshua's face had just suddenly shot up from his phone, and he was looking towards the Thames.

"Papa Drac just got home. I suspect he'll be hungry after his business trip, and I'm sure Integra has a hot meal waiting for him."

Neku looked back to the Players. Amy and Brad had started up a big hacky-sack circle to boost morale while they waited for something to happen. "Are we safe?"

"Should be," Joshua said, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a small leather pouch and tossed it to Neku. "Just in case, hold onto this. Don't open it up unless something bad happens and I can't save you."

"Right." Neku tucked it away and looked to the barricades. All those vehicles and dumpsters were starting to look very flimsy.

* * *

_Mmm, what's that smell? That's a big corpse. Smells tasty._

* * *

"Seras. Take me and follow Alucard. I'd like to have a full view of what's about to take place."

"Yes sir." Seras cradled Integra's body in her blood tendril and leapt to the rooftops. She could see Alucard flying over the city, guns in outstretched-hand and his wicked smile gleaming down on the warzone.

"Stay up here. It won't do to let the enemy see us all at once." They both knew Alucard would be heading for the largest mass of hostile forces. He undoubtedly wanted to face off against Iscariot and Millennium alike.

Seras and Integra skulked into the shadows and looked down on the quiet battleground. There were the two armies of Iscariot and Millennium. The vampires were outnumbered four to one, yet they had all the confidence in the world.

Alucard descended with deadly grace into the mass of Iscariot crusaders, teeth bared in a lusty grin. A flurry of golden scripts twirled through the air to announce Anderson's arrival, bayonets sharpened to a silver glistening. A body fell from Nazi zeppelin up above and landed in a cloud of dust: some mysterious third elite, representative of Millennium. The three converged between the lines of spears, an unholy trinity of bloodthirsty demons licking their chops and teasing their claws. All eyes were on Alucard, the only one with a cool demeanor in all of London. His soft, almost seductive grin made even the cold blood of the Nazis shiver.

"Lord!" Alucard cried out, completely aware of Integra and Seras' proximity to himself. "My lord, Integra Hellsing! Your orders!"

Seras remained crouched in the shadows as Integra rose to answer. Her cry reached over the armies to her loyal assassin. "My servant, the vampire Alucard, I now order you!

"Stain in vermillion the army wearing white with your gun of platinum. Stain in scarlet the army wearing black with your gun of iron. Stain with crimson each and every last one of our foes. Search and destroy! Search and destroy! Lay waste to them! Do not let them leave this island alive!"

Alucard's lips formed words, but whatever he said was lost to the wind. There was a still silence on all sides. Everyone waited to see what he would do.

Integra raised her arm to the heavens. "Releasing control-restriction system level zero. Make good on your homecoming. Unleash yourself thousands of times over and make good on your homecoming! Recite it!"

The words of Alucard's ancient oath were spoken quietly, yet they resounded within the ears of all in attendance.

"I am the Bird of Hermes…"

Joshua's ears perked, and flew away faster than Neku or the Players could follow. He suddenly became vividly aware of where all those strange stories of today had come from, and fear was forcefully stabbed through his heart. He fought it off though, because ultimately it didn't matter to him. Neku and Seras would be fine in the wake of Dracula. But Joshua knew he wasn't the only one who could feel his power.

"I eat my own wings…"

Anderson screamed in an attack and threw as many blades into Alucard as he could wield. The Millennium elite struck out and kicked at his head with enough force to topple a forest oak. The two armies of Iscariot and Millennium opened fire into the swirling mass of Alucard, scared frozen and then terrified into action.

"Everyone here has sensed it," Anderson said to himself, jumping away from the crossfire. "Something terrible is about to happen. Unless we put down this monster, something terrible is about to happen!"

Annabelle was struck out of the air by the force of power. Her eyes widened and sweat crept down her brow. "That's no vampire. That's Lucifer himself! If his power is unleashed, no one will survive!" She took off into the air, flames following her gait. "I've got to hur-"

A beam of energy flashed and struck her down. The Tamed Noise hissed up at its master's attacker. Annabelle looked up and was met with a pearly white Cheshire grin.

"Well now Miss King," Joshua hissed, his eyes filled with murderous intent. "I finally got you outside of your throne room."

"Kiryu!" Annabelle exclaimed, a spear of ice spreading through her heart. The fire of her Noise wrapped her body in an attempt to shield her. Joshua smiled at the little creature's futile attempt.

"I'll tell you what," he cooed down at her. "You can have the next hit. Make it a good one."

"… to keep myself tame…"

The mass of gore and giblets known as Alucard gyrated and writhed as though it were chuckling at the bullets penetrating it. A cease fire was announced, and the armies froze. In that momentary peace, with the still of the morning, the legions of Dracul were ripped from their filthy cage and thrown into the fray. Two solitary soldiers peaked out of their fetid cave, a Spaniard and a German woman. With the flesh of their souls penetrated by Dracula's omnipresent reach, they tore apart the forces of both Millennium and Iscariot.

The bloody mass reared its form and let itself pour out upon the streets. The tides of rot were high and crashed against the crumbling walls of the city. Mindless creatures, as ancient as Dracula himself, rose from the tides with gore gushing from their every orifice. Ghouls of the soul, prisoners and soldiers in their afterlife, they reached upon the warm bodies of the living and swept over them. Some were drawn by horses stolen from Hell, wearing suits of chthonic armor and wielding blades that had rent much stronger foes to their knees. All the while the river of Hades flowed in a fury, embracing everything in its path with violent force.

Everything was the hand of Dracula, king of vampires.

Seras and Integra watched the scene from above, safe against the wrecking tide. "That is what the vampire Alucard is," Integra told Seras. "Blood is the currency of the soul, the tender of life. It is nothing more than the medium by which life is transacted. To drink blood is to take the entire being of a life unto oneself. You can understand what that means now, can't you, Seras Victoria?"

Seras looked down at the gaping mouth of Hell, a few beads of sweat stuck behind her ear.

"Yes."


	14. Reunited and War

A forest grew in London that night. The trunks of trees were cold steel and iron, dripping sweet gory nectar from their macabre branches. Flesh and bone tore through the victim’s abdomen’s and contorted into agony posed as sickly decoration for the almighty Vampire King’s homecoming celebration.  
“Welcome back, Count.” Integra stood over the kneeling form of her servant. Dracula, armored in silver and iron, caught in a swirling pool of darkness, looked up at his master. His eyes were different from his other incarnation, more human in appearance. The last sliver of his human life, or perhaps a simple façade, Integra didn’t care either way.  
“I have returned, Countess.”  
  
Seras’ emotions were in a state of flux at the sight of her returned master, mainly because she didn’t actually see her master in front of her. Logically she knew it was Alucard, Seras had seen him explode and reshape himself into this new form, but still, she felt a great unease.  
“W-Welcome back, Master,” she managed to say without sounding quite as unsure as she was. Dracula’s eyes swiveled to her, and Seras felt them imbibe her mind. In an embarrassing moment of fear she slid behind Integra and peered out at her unfamiliar master.  
“M-Master, you have a mustache huh?” Seras traced her upper lip with her finger. Oh God, what am I doing, this is so bloody stupid! Roll with it Seras, roll with it. She contorted her face to make a sort of feline grin and kept drawing facial hair with her finger. “A mustache…”  
  
Dracula rose and lifted a single iron-plated hand toward Seras. She instinctually assumed that she’d done something wrong, and made a true effort to look cute and not flinch. In failing that much Seras closed her eyes and awaited some horror, and was met by… a gentle hand ruffling her hair like her father once had.  
She looked up to see her unfamiliar master smiling down at her with something akin to pride glowing from his face. “Seras… Seras Victoria.” He removed his hand from Seras’ head, and she felt a little taller than before. He said my name, she thought giddily. He finally said my name!  
  
Dracula turned his eyes behind Seras, and saw into the darkness of a distant alleyway where a figure hid in solitude. “I had anticipated an interloper,” he called out to the figure.   
“Although I was expecting a man, not a specter.” Seras followed her master’s gaze, as did Integra who saw nothing of what would happen next.  
A hooded man crept slowly out of the shadows. He was tall and lean, a match to even Dracula’s impressive frame. Deep blue eyes cut out of his darkened face, set in a stern, decisive expression, and focused on the two vampires. Seras recognized him instantly; there was no doubt in her mind, not a single thought of trepidation or suspicion.   
“Reece,” she whispered inaudibly, and began to walk involuntarily towards him. Memories of warmth and joy completely overtook her, and she became deaf to the world. Her vision tunneled, and all she could see was Reece. Without realizing it, Seras began to dash madly towards the man.  
  
Reece jerked back as he saw the vampire Seras charge at him. Her speed had increased a great deal since the incident on the roof. He could see her Familiar arm trailing her path, and the almost mad focus in her crimson eyes, but it was all a flash. At this distance he barely had the opportunity to defend himself, to reach into his pocket and brandish the knife he’d prepared in the event of a worst-case scenario. His fingers brushed against the cold metal of the hilt, but by then Seras was already upon him.  
Seras embraced Reece with the force of a train and buried her face in his chest. Reece froze, his entire world suddenly becoming a hazy mess. He looked down, completely baffled, and stared at the trembling little girl hugging him as tight as she could like he was a security blanket to a toddler. Seras was sobbing, practically soaking Reece’s jacket in what he thought were tears. Her weeping words were muffled, but he could make them out.  
  
“Reece! Oh, Reece!” And she kept crying. Reece was numb, nearly rendered speechless. He forced words to come out of his throat.  
“Uhh,” he struggled. “Seras? You… Remember? Me?”  
She looked up at him, and Reece was struck by her tragic visage: Seras’ skin had become even paler than before, and blood was draining from her eyes. It took him a moment to realize that the blood was her tears. Seras nodded up at him, and then started to break down all over again.  
“Reece,” she whimpered like an abandoned puppy. “I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you and I’m sorry I hurt Bobby, and I’m sorry I forgot and that I’ve been gone so long. I never should’ve let myself forget, I’m sorry!”  
“No sweetie, please don’t say you’re sorry, it wasn’t your fault.” Reece consoled his little girl, finally wrapping his arms around her. “I should have looked for you and brought you home, I was too damn whipped by the Higher Ups’ commands!” Seras shrunk at the feeling of his touch, and went back to crying. Reece held her head and cooed soothingly into her ear. After a while, Seras managed to calm down a bit and step back with an awkward giggle. Reece smiled and wiped the bloody tears from her face.  
  
Seras realized what she’d been crying all this time and clammed up guiltily. “Y-yeah… umm…” She pointed toward the blood on his hand. “I-I had to… uhh…”  
“Shush,” Reece commanded, wiping his hand on his already stained jacket. “You can tell me later. Right now I don’t bloody care.” Their eyes met, and he squeezed her shoulders reassuringly. “I’m just overjoyed to have my little Composer back.” A shaky smile crept over Seras’ face, and at that moment Reece didn’t see a grown woman who’d taken on vampirism: he saw a small happy girl riding around the room on a stuffed pony on her birthday.  
  
“O-okay,” Seras squeaked. A look of alarmed realization passed over her, and she turned back to see Integra and her master. “Oh shit, they see you. They just heard all of that.”  
“Well, they will if you keep talking that loudly,” Reece crossed his arms. “And probably only your… the vampire. The other woman can’t even see me.” He met Dracula’s stare, mindfully twirling the small knife he’d palmed after recovering from his shock. Reece considered how much force he would have to put into the blade to pierce the vampire’s armor. Dracula placed his hand comfortably on the hilt of his sword. Integra might have looked confused and annoyed.  
“Seras!” she called out. “What is this? What are you-“  
  
Suddenly a flurry of incandescent scripts whipped through the air, and a high battle scream sliced through Integra’s voice. Alexander Anderson appeared in the storm, bearing down on his vampiric foe with a holy bayonet in his hands. Dracula raised his sword and the two blades crossed in an explosion of sparks. The two flew apart, while Integra promptly went to Seras’ side out of harm’s way.  
Dracula looked upon Anderson and smiled. “Nicely done, my sworn enemy.”  
“We are the representatives of God,” Anderson intoned, as was his custom. “The agents of divine punishment on earth. Our calling is to exterminate the flesh of all the fools who would defy our God, down to the last trace!” He formed the Holy Cross’ image with his twin bayonets.  
  
Goodness, Reece thought to himself. The Higher Ups must love this guy. Just then an old crack began to fracture in Reece’s brain, nearly making him jump. He looked off into the sky, a wild look in his eyes.  
“Seras,” he said, looking back at her for an instant. “I’m sorry, but I need to leave right now. I’ll find you again sweetheart, I promise!” Without a moment’s hesitation to hear her reply Reece sprouted wings and took off into the sky.

* * *

Annabelle had been grievously harmed, and Reece had a strong suspicion that he knew who did it.  
“I’ll tell you what,” Joshua crooned down at the prone Annabelle, covered in her cute little Noise flame. “You can have the next hit. Make it a good one.”  
She pushed herself up onto her feet, draped in a yellow shawl of flame. Pebbles that had stuck in Annabelle’s alabaster flesh burnt away like wicks to a torch. Even the dust was consumed by fire, but the Composer remained cool. She shook the Noise off her back softly, as though it were a babe.  
“It’s alright, it’s alright,” she muttered to the flames. They licked at her arm disbelievingly.  
  
“Aw, that’s just precious!” Joshua giggled and bent forward as though he was lying in the air. “It cares about you.”  
Annabelle stared daggers at him. He acted more like a jester than a powerful Composer, but she knew better than to let his appearance affect her guard. The scorching blow she’d just taken to the back was proof enough of how dangerous Joshua was. The Noise was reaching out, tickling her fingertips. She beckoned it up her arm.  
“Kiryu,” she called up to him, regaining her composure. “I don’t know what your reasons are for opposing me. And I don’t care.” She tightened her fists as the Noise flared up her forearms. “You have invaded my territory. You have sided with an abomination against death. You have attacked my Reapers and disrupted my Players! And now you dare threaten me? ME!?” She leapt up, trailing fire in her wake, and drove her knee into Joshua’s jaw.  
  
“I am Composer Annabelle King, and no one opposes me! No one!” She brought her fiery fist up and slammed it into Joshua’s skull. He shot down, a burning meteorite, and crashed through a convenience store. Green and purple flames tinged the shattered roof, reaching toward Annabelle as she floated down to see the damage. Joshua’s body burned white with small streaks of crimson.   
Joshua flicked his finger and cast the fire off himself. His pristine white shirt had been lightly singed. “Really?” Joshua chuckled, although Annabelle noticed some strain in his humor. “Your first move is a Falcon Punch?” A singular drop of blood trickled from his forehead and down his cheek. He poked at it and admired his painted finger with curiosity. “Huh. I’m bleeding.” Joshua looked up at Annabelle. “You made me bleed.”  
  
“I’ll do worse than that,” Annabelle roared, still feeding off her own temper. She grabbed Joshua by the collar and lifted him up to meet her eyes.  
“I haven’t bled in so long,” Joshua spoke to himself. “I thought it all must have stagnated in my body. Crusted over, turned to sludge.” His eyes suddenly shot to Annabelle. He stared deep into her with shaky pupils. His eyes dilated as a new smile melted into his face.  
“But now, for the first time in years, I can feel my heart. I can feel it thumping against my chest, pumping ichor through my veins. You made me BLEED.”  
“You’ve gone nutty Kiryu. Our hearts don’t beat anymore.”  
“Oh?” Joshua cocked his head. “Annabelle my dear, if your heart doesn’t beat than where does all that passion and rage come from?”  
“What? You don’t need a sodding heart to have emotions. My passion comes from my spirit, my desire.”  
“Heh, a rose by any other name.” Annabelle cursed in annoyance and threw him away, breaking the wall in a shower of snacks. Joshua skipped off the concrete and regained his balance in the air. His eyes had a brilliant shine in them, and his smile did not falter once. Annabelle glided out of the hole he left as the store collapsed in on itself, gilded in the fire.  
  
“Come, Composer Annabelle King!” Joshua cried. He waved an arm, and several balls of light appeared beside him. “Let me hear the beat of your heart before you die!”  
The clusters of energy shot forward and burst against the road, firing beams in all directions. Annabelle flew straight up, her dress twirling as she danced between the burning lights. Her flaming Noise snaked through the lasers and opened its maw to engulf Joshua. He disappeared into a spiraling black portal, and the Noise carved a burning scar into the sidewalk.  
Something yanked Annabelle’s hair backward.   
“Did I say it was your turn, Anny?” Joshua whispered in her ear. She felt his hand press against her back, and then a huge force blew her away. Another portal opened in her path and a laser shot out of it and knocked her away. Suddenly she was being juggled inside a storm of lightning; her skin sizzled and burned, and her bones creaked against the force.  
  
The pattern became obvious. As Annabelle fell to where the next blast would originate, she extended her hand. The portal opened, a flash of light blinded her eyes, and she felt the burning electricity grind against her open palm. Concentrating, she took the full force into her arm and held the energy within her flesh. It scorched her insides and fed her rage. She eyed Joshua, half-concealed in his portal, and flew like a bullet. She grabbed his arm before he could flee and expelled all the energy from her mouth into his. Joshua struggled against her grasp, shaking violently as his single head wound began to burst with light. Once Annabelle felt all the excess power enter his body, she pulled him out into the open and kicked him square in the cranium. All the energy was forced out of him through the cut on his head, and the force caused it to rupture. Joshua spun through the air, propelled by the laser.   
  
The light flickered away, and Joshua steadied himself. His face was entirely red now, and his head had split down the side to his neck, completely exposing his skull. He never stopped smiling.  
“Now you’re bleeding,” Joshua spoke with a flat jovial tone. Annabelle looked down at herself. She had various burns and tears all over her body, from her legs to her chest. Her beautiful dress was in tatters. She shrugged it off, completely shameless of her naked form.  
“Heh, here.” Joshua opened a portal and pulled out a pair of jeans and a dress shirt. He tossed the clothes to her. “Not exactly your size, but that’s what I’ve got.”  
“What does it matter?”  
  
“I suppose it doesn’t,” he shrugged. “Just common courtesy. Feed the hungry and clothe the naked, etcetera etcetera.” Annabelle tossed the clothes between her hands passively. Joshua chuckled to himself. “Unless you want to die naked again. There’s some beauty in that I suppose; you end right where you began, naked and alone.”  
Annabelle pulled the pants on and buttoned them. It was a surprisingly close fit, although they cut off at her shins. The shirt fit alright as well, although it showed a bit of her naval and she had to undo the top button to let her chest breath.  
“Thought so. Ready to go back to dying?”  
Joshua’s ribs collapsed in on his lungs where Annabelle placed her fist. He didn’t move.  
“Cut the shite, I’m clearly winning.”  
  
Joshua coughed, and drops of blood splattered on her cheek. “Whatever you say, dear.” Joshua’s hands swung up, and he clapped the sides of Annabelle’s head. She stumbled back, disoriented. A hand gripped her bicep, and a knee was driven into her back, twisting the joint until it dislocated. Then she felt her shin bones snap as Joshua’s foot connected with her leg. Suddenly Annabelle became aware that she had fallen onto a rooftop. Joshua stood above her, still smiling.  
  
The sky above her evaporated into the inky blackness. The city appeared to be devoured as everything but the ground beneath her became a Stygian nothingness.  
“Yeah,” Joshua said. “You’re winning all right.” He kicked her in the chest and sent her flying into the void. Everything went dark for a moment. Before Annabelle could get her bearings, Joshua was in her path. He elbowed her spine, completely stopping her, and let her drop to the ground. She was still on the rooftop.  
Portals, she realized. He trapped us in an arena of portals. Annabelle gritted her teeth and managed to set her shoulder back into place with a painful grunt. She pushed herself up to her knees, blocking out the pain from her leg, and tried to see Joshua. He was standing there, looking down on her, waiting for her to get back up and take her turn. His eyes were cool, confident, arrogant even. Annabelle saw the power he had coursing through those eyes that he turned to her. He was trying to scare her and watch her break down from the inside. As though she would ever give in to a trick like that.  
  
She spat the blood from her mouth and slammed her hands into the ground. She flew upward and spun to drive her heel into Joshua’s wound. He caught her ankle and slammed her back down to the ground.  
“Are ya winnin’ son?” Joshua said, chortling to himself. No, he was laughing at her. Annabelle was sure of it.  
“Just shut up!” She rose to her knees and threw a punch, only for Joshua to catch it. She threw her other fist, but he caught it as well. He bent both hands backwards, feeling the bones in her wrist crackle under the force. Annabelle winced, pinned between Joshua’s grip and her broken leg.  
“Just die.” Beams fired in all directions into the portals surrounding them. Somewhere inside they all intersected and joined together, forming a massive spike of energy that emerged from the top of the dome and fell atop Annabelle.  
  
Annabelle felt with horrible clarity every micrometer of her flesh begin to freeze, charge, and burn all at once. Her muscles tightened up and refused to move, clinging desperately to sinew and bone as they were slowly torn apart. Her skin was being peeled off of her body like paper off a burning stone. Annabelle could do nothing. Not even close her eyes. Not even scream.  
  
No, she urged the thoughts into her mind, a single word at a time. This. Is. Not. How. I. Die. This is not how I die! I will not die! I will not die I will not die I will not die I will not die I will not die I will not IwillnotdieIwillnotdieIwillnotdieIwillnotdieIwillnotdieIwillnotdieIwillnotdieIwillnotdieIWILLNOTDIEIWILLNOTDIEIWILLNOTDIEIWILLNOTDIEIWILLNOTDIEIWILLNOTDIEIWILLNOTDIEIWILLNOTDIEIWILLNOTDIEIWILLNOTDIEIWILLNOTDIEIWILLNOTDIE!  
Her eyes pierced through the torrent of light at her arm and commanded it to move. The limb shook weakly, already given up. Annabelle grits her teeth and pushed her arm, forced it forward despite its protests. She tortured it, mutilated it, until it gave in and moved in a single fluid motion up, and straight back down. Every nerve in Annabelle’s body was so numb that she barely felt her wrist separate itself from her trapped hand, leaving a bloody stump and fragmented bones. She thrust the stump forward and   
penetrated the flesh of Joshua’s abdomen. The meat on her arm peeled away as she pushed it deeper and deeper inside of him.   
  
The laser flickered away and the dome of portals dissipated. Joshua released Annabelle’s hands and stumbled backwards. Annabelle’s arm slid out with a sickeningly juicy, popping sound. Ichor and bile were leaked out the gaping hole left in his body.  
“Huh,” Joshua grunted, covering the wound with his hand. “You stabbed my spleen. I don’t know where a spleen is or what it does, but I’m pretty sure that was it. My poor spleen.”  
  
Annabelle collapsed onto her side. Her vision blurred into a mixture of swimming colors. She blinked several times in an attempt to fix her sight, only to realize that only one of her eyes was blinking. The other eyelid had burned away completely, and that eye refused to perceive any shape. She looked over to see her hand, the one still attached. Her entire arm was red, and blood poured out of it in bursting red globules. Most of her body was like this, save a few patches of loose skin in some of the concealed curves.  
  
Get up you mangy cur, Annabelle chastised herself. She rolled over to her good leg and scraped herself up to rest on its knee. The other leg gingerly helped to support her. Annabelle looked at her other arm; there was little more than bone up to the elbow, where all the flesh had peeled to like a banana. On one of the slabs of flesh was her hand, dangling uselessly like a rotten fruit refusing to leave the branch. It was around then that Annabelle’s nerves went back to telling her brain how badly she was dying.  
“GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHH! GAAAAHHAAAAAAAAA! AAAAAAAAAGH AAAAAAAH!” Purple flames erupted on the roof and ate away at the building. Everything fell into the pall of heat and smoke; Annabelle saw Joshua’s body plummet down into the cinders. A feminine figure rose from the fire and took Annabelle’s crippled body. It descended to the ground slowly, cradling her in its arms. She looked up at the face of her Tamed Noise and offered a silent thanks.  
  
When the two reached the ground, Joshua was sitting on a pile of rubble, clapping his hands together. “Good show, really well done!” He cheered as the Noise let Annabelle down and she balanced herself on one foot.  
“How. Are you still. Alive?” Annabelle bellowed, struggling for breath.  
Joshua showed his teeth. “You know I could ask the same to you. I was really trying to kill you that last time.”  
“I have broken you, burned you, beaten and stabbed you!” she was screaming now. “You should be bleeding on the fucking ground!”  
“Tsk tsk.” Joshua wiggled his finger. “Should I now?” He lifted up his shirt where the blood stained through its tear. His stomach looked untouched.   
  
Annabelle was dumbfounded. “Heheh, poor little Composer. So very young, doesn’t even know what she can do yet.” Joshua wiped the blood off his face and split his hair. The wound had completely reconnected, even the skin looked good as new. “Let me guess: once you became a Composer and got all your new powers, you decided to focus on brute strength and the ability to heal others. The thought never even crossed your mind that you’d need to heal yourself one day. Didn’t even keep a little regenerative Pin in the case of emergencies. Ha, how arrogant.” Annabelle ground her teeth and clenched her remaining fist.  
“Oh don’t give me that look, you know I’m right,” Joshua scoffed. “Although I really must commend you on your sheer determination. Trapped and in excruciating pain, and you’re desperate enough to snap off your own hand and stab me with the bone! I’m just a sucker for that kind of thing, it exhibits the power of pure instinctual will. Some people sit down and wait to die while others attack the beast using their own bloody limbs as clubs. It’s beautiful in its own way, don’t you think?”  
  
Annabelle’s eyes darted away. She held up her ruined arm to the Noise. “Cauterize it.” The Noise looked at her worriedly. It wanted her to retreat and treat her wounds. “Cauterize it!” she shouted. It complied and laid its hands on the hanging flesh. Annabelle took a sharp breath as it burned away, leaving a charred stump and two sharpened black bones.  
Just then Annabelle heard a sound, unlike anything she’d ever imagined. The closest analogy to it would be if the entirety of Hell heard a joke and chuckled at it in the exact same way at precisely the same time, and you heard them chuckling from under a pool of shaking gelatin. Annabelle turned to see what made this strange noise and found a flowing river of gory faces churning just beyond the flames of her Noise. Each on dressed from a different era, wielding a different weapon or no weapon at all, and each one had their eyes gouged out and some kind of terrible wound somewhere on their bodies. All of these things were making the same sound.  
  
“What the fuck?!” Annabelle said, instinctually jumping away.  
“Oh, you didn’t notice our audience? He’s been here a little while now, undoubtedly entertaining himself.”  
“He?” Annabelle asked incredulously. “Who’s he? What are these things? They look like… like dead souls.”  
“Well, you already answered half of your own question! Not exactly worth a gold star but I can probably dig up a smiley-face sticker.”  
“Quit the sodding jokes and tell me!”  
“Alright alright, settle down. Do you know how tiring it gets to have to explain everything to everyone? I’m allowed to entertain myself. Every face you see hovering behind your   
  
Noise’s flames, every contorted image of a human body that swims through the River Styx and cannot reach the other shore, is a soul lost to both the Real Ground and the Under Ground. They were stolen from the Higher Ups, completely against their will, by a single creature with an undying gluttony for blood.”  
“You mean… a VAMPIRE made all these?”  
“The word ‘made’ is generous. I’d say raped and enslaved. And not just a vampire, THE vampire. The Big Bad Bat himself, Count Dracula.”  
Annabelle looked at him like he was about to honk his nose. “You can’t be serious.”  
“Completely serious.”  
“Dracula. As in Bram Stoker Dracula. Three wives, tried to take over London, got stabbed in the heart by some old codger.”  
“Nothing you just said was wrong. Hellsing kept him alive and enslaved him for some top secret experiments and as an anti-Midian weapon. He works for the British government now, swears his loyalty to Hellsing’s heir. Complete jerk, threatened my life in a tea shop.”  
  
“And that power I felt before. That was him releasing all this?”  
“Yeah.” Joshua put his hands in his pockets and looked at the tide of souls. “Disgusting, isn’t it? All these poor people being denied their final destination to accentuate the life of some thuggish creature. Even children who rightfully should have entered the Game for a chance to regain their lives.”  
“It’s worse than disgusting,” Annabelle said. “It’s despicable. It’s a crime deserving of the worst possible punishment.”  
“I’m glad we can agree on that, at the very least.” Joshua spat at the horde, and they made that bizarre laughing noise again.  
Annabelle thought for a moment. “Then why don’t we go and kill the beast? Both of us, right now. We can finish killing each other later.”  
  
Joshua snickered. “Ah, youthful ignorance. Annabelle, even if we were both at our peak of power, we couldn’t kill that vampire. You and I gave up the right to slay monsters when we chose the afterlife over the real world.”  
Annabelle crooked an eyebrow. “I don’t understand. Richard and Reece have killed vampires before.”  
“Yeah, young ones. Probably even unbloodied. Dracula is an entirely different level of monster, one that we simply can’t kill. We’re just ghosts. It’d take a higher echelon of man to kill something like Dracula.” Joshua turned his eyes and spoke to himself. “Hmm, maybe with a decade of training Neku could do it. I’ll have to remember that for later.”  
“So, you’re set on continuing to fight me?”  
“’Fraid so. Terrible shame too, killing you seems like a waste of potential. Orders are orders, though.” Annabelle narrowed her eyes at this last remark, and then suddenly was struck by a revelation. She flexed her hand and the ground beneath her cracked. “Ooh, still got some kick left in ya.”  
  
Annabelle’s blood pressure spiked, spurting out from the myriad of torn veins all over her body. “You aren’t working with Seras,” she growled. “You’re just preening her to be my replacement because the Higher Ups told you to! They sent you to assassinate me!”  
Joshua winked. “Bingo, baby cakes. I can’t imagine what you’re going to do that made Them so upset, but I don’t ask Them questions anymore.” The flames around them grew higher, as though the Noise was sharing Annabelle’s rage.  
  
She spoke to the Noise, still glaring at Joshua. She’d begun to float inches above the ground. “Bring me my bag.” A strand of fire snaked into view holding an aged animal-hide satchel. Annabelle opened the flap and plucked out two objects: Joshua identified them as Pins, old ones that were no longer in use. She unhooked one and slipped the needle into one of her exposed arm bones, clipping it into the marrow. This one gave off some static and electricity began to course down the bones and extend outward to a point. The other Pin she kept in her palm, and with a swing, it erupted into a length of barbed wire.  
“Ah, finally I get to see some weapons!” Joshua grinned. “Talk about classics. You look ready to fight an army.”  
“Nope. Just two people.” She raised her electric arm and spears of thunder manifested in the air and shot at Joshua. He slid under the volley, only to find the barbed wire wrap around his waist. Annabelle pulled him toward her and plunged her bones into his side. After the first strike, he unleashed a short burst of energy and broke out of her hold.  
“I won’t give you the time to heal!” She dashed after him, swinging both arms wildly. Joshua disappeared into a portal. “Oh no, you don’t!” Annabelle swung the wire into the hole and caught him by the ankle. When she forced him back out, he summoned a laser that struck her square in the head. She anticipated Joshua to attack while she was dazed and summoned her Noise to guard her. But no attack came. In fact, that laser felt weak.  
  
Joshua was floating several meters above Annabelle, looking off into the sky.   
“What are you doing?” She yelled up to him. “Get down here and fight me!” She swung so the barbed wire would tear away Joshua’s face. Joshua caught it in his hand and locked his fingers. Blood oozed out of his grip, but he was unperturbed.  
“I’d love to, but I made a bit of an error,” Joshua said with a pensive look. “I thought I’d be able to kill you with that one strike and wouldn’t have to worry about this, but I was wrong. So now, since I probably can’t finish you off in one quick motion, I’d be better off saving my strength for him.” He cast the wire away, and it reeled back into Annabelle’s Pin. For him?  
  
Suddenly a winged man sped out of the sky and landed between Annabelle and Joshua. Reece spread his arms and wings protectively.  
“Composer King, I felt you were in danger. Are you-“ He looked back. Annabelle was completely naked to the point of having almost no skin or hair on her entire body. A bone was sticking out of her leg, and one of her arms was only a bone. Her hair was completely gone, and her left eye was constantly watering because it had no lid. “No, you are not alright.”  
“I’m fine,” Annabelle lied like a champ. “Help me kill Kiryu.”  
“No Composer, you have to return to HQ and get healed. The best I can do out here is reset your leg bone.”  
“It’s sticking out?” She looked down and was surprised to see her shin bone coming out at the side. Her entire lower body had been numbed after Joshua struck her in the spine. “Huh. But no, I’m staying here and finishing the fight. He attacked me, I’m not just going to run away with my-“  
  
“Annabelle!” Reece yelled. She noticed the reserved care in his voice again. “Please. Go back. I can handle this, and your Reapers have almost completely wiped out the invader's forces. There is nothing left for you to concern yourself with.”  
Annabelle furrowed her hairless brow. “Not nothing. But… alright. I’ll return to base. Contact me once you’ve tidied up, there are survivors that need to be guided out of the city.”  
  
Reece smiled. “As you wish, Composer King.” Annabelle set off into the sky, her Noise trailing behind her. Joshua, Reece, and the Legion of Dracul remained where they were.  
“You know she’s going to try to kill Seras once she’s healed up,” Joshua said.  
  
“Nobody else has to die tonight.”  
  
Joshua smirked and cracked his knuckles. “Oh, I disagree. Shall we get start-“ A bang went off, and Joshua was knocked out of the sky. He picked himself up and rubbed the forming bruise on his shoulder.  
  
Reece blew the smoke streaming out the barrel of his shotgun. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out an assault rifle. Joshua smelled Producer technology in the mechanics. These guns could hit anything in the UG.  
  
“If you aren’t going to listen like a good little boy,” Reece said as an expression of calm ennui took over his face. “Then you should shut your smarmy mouth before I put you over my knee.”

* * *

  
Amy kicked at a pebble and sent it skipping over the carpet of lifeless ghouls. She twirled her yoyo mindlessly, whistling to herself. Most of the remaining Players had gone into the church by then, convinced that the job was done and waiting for the day to be over. Meanwhile, some of the braver citizens inched out of the church to see all the carnage. They were debating whether or not they could find an egress point through some nearby bar just inside the barrier. Brad had climbed up to the roof and was fiddling with a few cassettes.   
“B!” she yelled with a whine. “I’m bored!”  
Brad glanced down at her. “Good. Boredom means nobody’s dying. We did our job, we earned our lives back, let’s just wait for the Reapers to hold up on their end of the bargain.”  
Amy flinched. She wasn’t used to Brad talking like that anymore, and she did not like that look he gave her. “But, I mean, what fun is that?”  
  
Brad’s hands froze over the tape he was working on. “Fun? Amy, what part of this is ‘fun?’”  
“W-well, I mean…”  
“Amy, look around! The whole city is burning, and there are dead people piled up to our waists! Fighting monsters and Reapers is one thing Ames, this is a different thing entirely. This is NOT fun.”  
  
Amy stammered nervously and pulled at her hair. She realized that it had fallen out of the pigtails she had put so much time into making. It was slick too, as though she just stepped out of the shower. She looked at her hand and saw cold, congealing blood mixing in with her hair dye. Her veins iced over at the sight of it, and she started shaking.  
Brad sighed and slid the tape into his stereo. “I’m sorry for yelling at you. I’m sore and exhausted. Can we please just take this time to rest a little?” He pressed a button, and smooth jazz began to pipe out. Amy looked away from her hand and saw Brad smile at her affectionately. She made an effort to return the gesture, and he turned over and laid on the roof.  
  
She stood there a while listening to the saxophone, looking at Brad’s bareback inch itself out of his oversized fur coat. Scars peaked out from his flesh, each one a memory the two shared. The scar below her chest began to itch. The buzzing of flies swirling around the remains at her feet irritated her knees. Amy decided to go back to the barricades.  
Inside the barricade blocking off the main road were two sedans that lined up perfectly with each other so that a person could climb through. Neku was there, sitting at the window closest to the outside. He was looking out at the crowd of not-ghouls. The strange creatures had shown up perhaps a half hour before, and most of them swept down other streets while a few others stayed by the pile of vehicles. They seemed to be watching Neku, and he watched them.   
  
Amy climbed in beside him. “Are the Arabian Knights still hanging out?”  
“I don’t think they’re Arab. But yeah, they’re still here. Haven’t moved much.” Neku picked up a fry from a paper tray and munched on half of it.  
“Yo, where’d you get the snacks?” Amy asked. Neku pointed out to some hole-in-the-wall fish and chips place down the block as he ate the rest of the fry. “You went all the way out there? What about those dudes?”  
  
“Oddly they didn’t seem to care that much. Just kept watching me.”  
“Huh,” Amy turned her head to the side. “Fucking bizarre.” Her eyes turned back to the food sitting in Neku’s lap. Her mouth began to water at the smell of the grease. “Hey, can I get some of those fries?”  
“Yeah sure.” He held out the bowl and let Amy take a handful.  
“Thanks, man. Hey, you know what I never got? Why do the Brits call ‘em chips? And they call chips crisps. If fries are chips and chips are crisps, what are fries to them?” Neku shrugged with a light grunt. Amy frowned, then stuffed all the fries into her mouth at once.  
“Mmph,” she mumbled. “Meebs sald.” She swallowed them all in one gulp and leaned back. Out in the distance of the city, she could see faint flashes of light where some battle was still being waged. “You think someone’s fighting their final boss out there?”  
  
Neku turned back to her in confusion. “What?”  
“Out there.” She pointed toward the lights. “Is that a boss fight or just a regular fight? Maybe a skilled warrior beating the shit out of his rival.”  
“Umm,” Neku’s forehead wrinkled. “That’s a weird way to put it, but… maybe? It’s probably just the last soldiers trying to pick off each other.”  
“Hmm,” Amy hummed. “We should go and check. Join the fight.”  
“Can’t. There’s no way to be sure the people in the church are safe. These things might just try to eat them once we leave.”  
“The other Players can stay and protect them. You, me, and B can leave.”  
“Heh, no offense to those other guys, but I don’t think they’d last very long without us. These things are tougher than Noise, and they don’t seem to be able to take the pressure.”  
  
Amy threw her hands up. “Well, what then, we sit around here on our asses doing jack shit while someone else fights for us? That’s real fuckin’ heroic.” She crossed her arms in frustration and started tapping her foot.  
Neku looked at her curiously. “Aren’t you tired of fighting?”  
“No.” She looked down at the gas pedal. “I’d rather be knocking around skulls than sitting around doing nothing.”  
“Hmm. Why?”  
Amy sneered. “Because we could be DOING something! I never got people who could just sit on a couch for days on end doing nothing. I’d at least like something to do with my hands. A fucking jigsaw puzzle would work.”  
  
Neku raised an eyebrow. “So if I gave you a jigsaw puzzle you’d be happy?”  
“NO! Ugh, you don’t get it. There’s something exciting going on out there, and I’m not a part of it! I want to be involved, I wanna fight the bad guy and save the city! I want…” Her voice drifted off into inane grumbling.  
“You want to be the hero,” Neku finished.  
“Yeah,” she said, a little softer. “They say everybody’s the main character of their own story. But so many people don’t have interesting stories! I want my story to be exciting, with danger and epic conflicts. I want romance and intrigue and a final grand climax. I want to die by doing something amazing, not get hit by a fucking truck because British roads are retarded. When I get old and tell the stories of my life to my grandkids, I want them to look at me like I’m Superman.”  
“I see…”  
  
“Let me give you an example,” Amy went on. “When I was thirteen, my town was holding a Civil War reenactment, and I wanted to join the front lines. But because I’m a girl I could only be a nurse, and that’s no fun. Nurses don’t get to fight, they aren’t a part of the action, they just hide behind battle lines and stick leaves in wounds or some shit. So I hacked off my hair, wrapped up my boobs, and stuffed a sock in my pants so it looked like I was a boy. They gave Brad and me our own muskets with fake knives at the end, and we went out there and kicked ass! Historically our side was supposed to lose that battle, but Brad and I kept fighting even after the rest surrendered. They’d shoot us and beat us, but we kept getting up and fighting back. We even managed to rally some of our forces and start a counter-offensive! We took a battle that we were supposed to lose and turned it into a stomping! Brad and I were also banned from participating again for life, but hey other towns do reenactments. Now come on, tell me that isn’t a great story!”  
  
Neku was at a loss for words for a minute. “It sounds like you lied your way into a fake fight and took it way too seriously. And cheated by not dying when you were shot.”  
“Bah, they were only flesh wounds. I got a doctor to look at the bruises and tell me if I’d die if a bullet went through those spots. He said I’d be fine.”  
“Uh huh…”   
Amy stopped and looked at Neku’s face. She shrunk down in embarrassment. “Oh please don’t look at me like I’m crazy.”  
Neku waved his hands defensively. “No no, I don’t think you’re crazy! It’s just a lot to take in. I only just met you, you know.”  
“Hmm,” she mumbled doubtingly. She clutched at her knees protectively, suddenly feeling very insecure. “I’m going to go be with Brad. I’ll tell you if anything changes, I guess.”   
  
Neku opened his mouth to say something reassuring and profound. He ended up gurgling a few syllables and shut up. When Amy was gone, he smacked himself in the head and berated himself. If understanding other people was impossible, then trying to understand someone so completely opposite to himself was completely ludicrous. Neku never wanted the sort of excitement or heroic lifestyle Amy did, he was content to just be with his friends and never fight monsters again. It seemed like she was looking for monsters.  
  
Amy slid down the barricade and crossed her arms. She considered making herself cry a little to persuade Brad into cuddling with her, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. When she saw him, he was standing up with his boom box on his shoulder. He looked alarmed by something.  
“What’s up B?” He didn’t need to respond; the far barricade began to shake as she spoke. Windshields cracked and shattered as the cars wobbled more and more violently. Some of the Players had noticed and were coming out of the church, while civilians retreated back inside.  
  
Blood began to spread from the bottom of the unstable barricade. Amy spun her yoyo and let its energy pour out of it. She called out to Neku.  
He popped out of the car and appeared next to her. “What’s go – Woah. Everybody stay back, it’s about to come down!” The Players scattered as vans and cars began to tumble down and crush the bodies below them. They crunched down into themselves and screamed in pain with burglar alarms. Some were still being pushed off to the side, opening up into a path. Neku placed a hand on his pocket of Pins, and the small bag Joshua had given him.  
The last car was shoved away, revealing the hand that pushed them. A man, or at least what appeared to be a man, stepped out dragging a slab of metal as long as Neku was tall. He seemed to be a hairy man, with huge bushy locks reaching down to his knees and a full beard that went to his chest. He was wearing a loose rain jacket and slacks, and was completely barefoot and covered in filth of all kinds. His clothes were burnt and torn in multiple places, his exposed skin was encrusted with soil, and he was covered in blood. They also noticed that the horde of ghouls that had been behind the barrier was gone now, and the man was chewing on half of a human head. He sniffed the air like a dog with someone else’s jaw dangling out of his mouth.  
  
Neku instinctively palmed all his Pins and slipped them between his fingers. The second his Pins left his pocket the man’s head turned to face him. Amy widened her stance and spun her yoyo faster and faster.  
Neku squinted. “Is he blind?” Amy looked at Neku and back to the man. Behind a layer of dirty hair, she could just make out the milky-white of his eyes. His pupils looked completely dead, and she doubted he’d ever been able to see.  
  
“Looks like it,” Amy said. “Why’d he focus on you then?”  
“Dunno, but something isn’t right here. This guy doesn’t look like a Nazi or a Reaper. He might have no place in this fight.”  
“He’s eating a dead body,” Brad pointed out as the man slurped down the rest of the skull. “Bones and all.” They lurched with revulsion at the sound of bones crackling down the man’s throat.  
“You don’t think he ate all the zombies back there, do you?” Amy asked  
“No,” Neku shook his head. “There’s no way.”  
“Then where did they go?” Neku didn’t answer this. The man sniffed again, shuffling his feet through dead meat. Suddenly he raised the hunk of iron he’d been dragging over his head and brought it down with a mechanic crunch. Neku and the Players recoiled as he did this, but the man didn’t pick the thing back up. Instead, he gripped it at the hilt, occasionally tapping the main body with his long and jagged fingernail. While he did that Amy was able to really get a good look at the object for the first time; it appeared to be a single-edged blade, squared off at the end rather than pointed. The edge itself was dull and chipped in multiple places, mainly at the tip. It reminded her of a cartoonish butcher’s knife, but big enough to cut through a moose instead of a porterhouse.   
  
“Uh, guys…” One of the other Players muttered, trembling in fear. “Maybe we could just, you know, leave this one alone? Let the Reapers – GAH!” Before she could finish her thought the huge cleaver swung straight through her ribs and severed her spine, coming out the other side with a gush of blood. The man spun on his heels and cut through another Player’s legs, and when he fell the man turned his head into paste with a single stomp. The last Player barely had time to raise his first Pin before the blade arched through the air and carved all the flesh from the front of his body, spilling brains and organs over the ground.   
  
Brad made the mistake of blinking and missed most of this, so he couldn’t react when the man came at him next. In a panic, Amy pushed Brad out of the way, and suddenly a whirlwind formed under the man and sent him into the air. Neku leapt after him, throwing fireballs that the man dodged nimbly and blocked with his cleaver.  
Amy spun out her yoyo and rolled behind the two. She swung and struck the man in the back, slamming him back into the ground. Neku teleported to the fallen cars and touched one with two Pins. The car shot toward the man and broke against him, but completely stopped. With a click on the second Pin, the car exploded, sending the man further down the carpet of bodies. His feet remained firmly on the ground.  
  
“B!” Amy called. “Give us a fucking beat, and make it a good one!”  
“Rodger Dodger!” Brad popped a CD into the tray and let it spin. A whole orchestra and choir boomed from the speakers, and a golden aura enveloped Amy and Neku. Each felt their adrenaline rise tenfold, and their muscles felt as powerful as Cadillacs. “I call it ‘Super Saiyan Symphony!’”  
Aww, he does pay attention to my shows! Amy thought with a touched grin.  
“Alright,” Neku said, brandishing his Pins at the man. “Looks like we’ve got one last vampire to kill.”  
Amy spun her yoyo, feeling high on adrenaline. “Let’s turn him to dust!”

* * *

Meanwhile, as the battle began, the last four Reapers were making a mad dash toward the origin of that terrifying wave of power. Richard took point while Megan and Rocky formed the sides and Oni held the rear. Oni was the only one to notice and recognize Neku below them, and called out to the others.  
“Guys hold up, we’ve got survivors!” The Reapers turned back and followed Oni’s gaze. “Looks like the Living Player and two regular Players are fighting a vamp.”  
“Uck,” Rocky belched, recognizing Amy and Brad. “They can handle a single vampire, come on let’s go.” He tapped Richard on the shoulder to get everyone moving again, but   
  
Richard didn’t budge. He was staring wide-eyed at the battle below them.  
“What’s up Richard?” Megan asked. Without a word he darted out of the sky, sword fully was drawn, and connected with the man’s cleaver. The two separated, and everyone jumped back.  
“Woah!” Amy skid to a halt. “Fucking hell man, warn people when you’re about to do that! I nearly caved your skull in!”  
“Ha, have fun with that sister.” Neku turned at the sound of Oni’s voice. The Reapers approached Richard’s side, their various weapons charged and ready. “What’s the problem Rich? You know this guy?”  
“Yeah,” Richard said. “You should too. Look at him, carefully.” Oni squinted his eyes, unsure what he was meant to be seeing. Rocky scratched his head wearily.  
  
Megan looked into the man’s blind eyes and suddenly realized who it was. “Oh my God! Is that… Is that Butch?!” Oni and Rocky’s mouths opened in shock. They could see it now too. Butch tapped his cleaver thoughtfully.  
Neku stepped up. “You know him?”  
“Know him?” Oni said incredulously. “This is the Butcher! He was our Conductor years ago! Then after our Composer ascended he disappeared, went AWOL.”  
“And now here he is,” Rocky growled, crouching into a fighting stance. “The traitor come back to die.”  
“Hold on a sec Rock,” Megan said. “We don’t know if he is a traitor. Something could have forced him to leave.” A loud clang rang in their ears as metal connected. Butch had charged at the Reapers and swung to cut them all down in one attack, but Richard blocked it. His blessed sword shimmered faintly against the blood stains on the cleaver.  
“You were saying?”

* * *

“Amen!” Alexander Anderson charged forward, twin bayonets in both hands. The Holy Script buffered his approach, glowing protectively, offering the man their blessing. Dracula swung his accursed blade and met Anderson’s bayonets, and blue flame erupted from the collision. The fire passed over the Script, and it all burned away meekly.  
  
Dracula smiled as blood dripped down his cheek. “I’m impressed that you have developed yourself so fully, as a man.” Seras stepped forward, prepared to enter the battle and fight by her master’s side as a full vampire. Integra placed her arm in Seras’ path and shook her head silently. She understood; this fight was a duel between monster and man, the ancient war living on in two bodies. So long as this balance was held, interruption would not be tolerated.  
“My enemy, try to kill me!” Dracula challenged. “Go ahead and thrust your bayonet into my heart! As occurred five hundred years ago… As occurred one hundred years ago… Put an end to the interlude between my dreams, my beloved archenemy.”  
  
Anderson’s resolute expression remained steeled. “You need not even ask!” He charged again, and they exchange blows. Their blades slice through the air with the fury and skill of master warmongers. Dracula feinted to the side and brought his sword down on Anderson’s thick neck. Anderson dodged backwards and procured multiple bayonets, each one sliding out from between his fingers. He threw them perfectly to pierce Dracula’s sordid flesh.  
  
Suddenly the flying bayonets exploded into shards at the sound of gunshots. A bullet blew through Anderson’s hand. Seras looked to where Dracula had been, but the ancient warlord had vanished. In his place stood her familiar master, Alucard.  
“Pure silver, macedonium-processed mercury rounds in Marvels Chemical NNA9 cartridges. Thirty-nine centimeters in length, weighing sixteen kilograms, with thirteen-millimeter armor-piercing rounds.” Alucard held up his black gun and admired it. “Jackal! It’s perfect, Walter!”  
  
Anderson yelled, enraged, and charged yet again. Alucard shot his silver gun, Casull, only for Anderson to block the bullet. His teasing curiosity satisfied, Alucard fired the Jackal and blew a hole straight through Anderson’s arm. He ignored the wound and swung at the monster with his good hand, and connected with flesh. Three ghouls of Dracul fell, sliced in two. Alucard was floating away, and his army of blood filled the gap between him and Anderson. Suddenly a magic musket ball seared itself through his body, twisting and turning in his body. A hail of magic cards ripped Anderson’s flesh. All of a sudden the man was facing an ancient army gathered from all the corners of Hell.  
“Now what?” Alucard teased from his perch. “Now what will you do? Your monster is right here, Catholic! You’re going to defeat me, right? What are your chances of winning?   
  
One in a thousand? One in ten thousand? A billion? A trillion? Or even a quadrillion?”  
“Even if it’s a novemdecillion, I can still more than handle it!”   
Anderson carved into the army with his single hand. He cut down layer after individual layer of ghoul, but the swarm was a veritable hydra to his attacks. The pain in his crippled arm was screaming at his brain constantly, and soon exhaustion ebbed at Anderson’s form. He paused before the Legion, struggling for breath.  
  
“What’s the matter, Christian? Your monster is over here,” Alucard taunted him at the first sign of weakness. “You’re wounded from head to toe. Your arm is cut through, and about to fall off. What will you do? Are you a dog? Or are you a human?”  
“What does it matter, vampire?” Anderson stretched his head down and bit into the sleeve of his bad arm. “My arm has only been cut through, hasn’t it? Now stop boasting and come at me. Come on and fight me! Hurry! Hurry!” He pulled his arm up with his teeth and tossed a bayonet into its hand. He caught the hilt deftly and let it rest there. Broken and half as effective as he could be, and still Anderson was prepared to fight. Alucard was struck by the man’s drive, and was ecstatic.  
“Fantastic,” he whispered, barely loud enough for Seras to hear. “Humans are magnificent, all right.” A wave of mist obscured Seras’ vision, and she couldn’t see Alucard or   
  
Anderson. When it passed over she saw that all of the Legion of Dracul had appeared and overtaken the area.  
Anderson let out a battle cry through his sleeve and attacked the mass. Again and again, the tide of death would encompass him, and each time he would cut his way back out with his holy bayonets. “Exploding chain!” he shouted, and threw out a long chain of bayonets that dug into the heads of any ghoul in front of him. A second passed by, and the blades exploded, sending body parts and smoke in every direction. Through the smoke, Anderson could see the outline of Alucard.  
“Forward!” he screamed, charging haphazardly through the crowd. Most of the ghouls were no more than inconsequential breezes against his blades. “Forward! Forward!” Dead hands scratched and tore at his flesh, but Anderson hardly felt it. There was Alucard. He was right there! “Forward! Forward! Forward! Forward!” A large bald man stepped in his path and stretched his arms.  
  
“Get out of my way!” Anderson thrust a bayonet into the corpse’s mouth, but it caught between the thing’s teeth. Anderson wiggled it, but nothing budged. The man took hold of Anderson’s good arm and began twisting it painfully. He winced, and the struggle in his heart began to dwindle. Anderson looked beyond the man and saw the undead cavalry charging towards him, spears out and pointed to his chest.  
Seras noticed something moving at the corner of her eye.  
Suddenly a hail of gunfire peppered the horses and their riders as though God himself had smite them. They fell to the ground steaming. Anderson could tell who it was instantly.  
  
“Damn it, you fools! You giant, meddling dumbasses!” Seras recognized Iscariot, including Anderson’s two Catholic pets. The blond man had a cigarette in his mouth and seemed to be letting his guns cool off. Wait, is that a guy? Seras suddenly thought. His chest is a little puffy. I think?  
“If we return to the Vatican now, we will no longer be who we are!” the German shouted out to him. “We will no longer be Judas of Iscariot! We will become mere bags of flesh, filled with blood and human waste!” Could that be a girl’s voice? It’s so hard to tell!  
There was a flash, and a spurt of blood from the big ghoul holding Anderson’s arm. Its head split in two.  
  
“’By crying out amen and killing, the world slippeth back into place.’” The Japanese nun crouched down low. “You’re the one who taught us that, aren’t you?! Now let us behold the deceit of the zealot!”  
“You ignorant fools! All of you are thinking only of dying! Limbo has been made full!” Anderson turned away from them, his heart weary. They were all such stubborn idiots.   
  
He’d taught them well. “Very well, come with me. I’m about to charge my way into Hell at full speed! Join me, as you always have! Who are ye?”  
“We are Iscariot!” the company announced to the caverns of Hell. “We are Judas of Iscariot!” They all charge into the fray, a single war machine consisting of iron and flesh. The machine bore into the enemy like a drill into ice, throwing chunks out by the handful. Whenever a part of the machine was torn from its mechanical innards the gear cried “Amen!” and detonated, taking out more of the opposing forces. Before long a huge section of the Legion of Dracul was blown apart, and Anderson stood before Nosferatu yet again. All of Iscariot froze to watch the spectacle.  
  
“You stand before me?” Alucard asked cheerily. “I’m impressed. I’m impressed, Iscariot. I’m impressed, Alexander Anderson!” Anderson didn’t respond. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a long wooden box wrapped loosely in cloth.   
“You’re not the only one who carries a weapon that can end life,” Anderson said with a sense of finality.  
Alucard continued to smile. “That’s your ace in the hole, is it?” Anderson’s hand flexed, and the wood began to crack between his fingers. Alucard’s joyful smile began to waver, then slowly it fell and curled into a malignant scowl. The box shattered, and Anderson was left holding a large wooden nail.  
“A nail?” Alucard inquired. “The Holy Shroud… the Holy Grail… the Lance of Longinus… That is the last of the lost holy artifacts of Rome?”  
“That’s right,” Anderson said with some reverence.  
“That lingering scent of a miracle – it’s the Holy Nail of Helena!”  
“That’s right!” Anderson turned the nail in his hand and aimed it at his heart.  
  
“Don’t do it, Anderson!” Alucard pleaded. “Are you trying to become a monster?! A monster of God?! Do you mean to become an actual plaything of the divine power of immortality? It’s the same thing. It amounts to the same rubbish! Whether a monster that affirms God, or a monster that denies God… Do you intend to use the scrap from that miracle to become more scrap from that miracle, yourself? Do you mean to drive you, me, and our duel into the afterlife? A monster like me… A weak monster who could not bear to be human must be defeated by a human.” Alucard looked sympathetically at Anderson. “Don’t do it, human. Don’t become a monster… like me.”  
  
Anderson felt the emotion in Alucard’s plea, but was uncaring. “I just want to be a bayonet. I just want to be a bayonet of God’s punishment. I wouldn’t have minded being born a storm. I wouldn’t have minded being a threat. I wouldn’t have minded being an explosive. I wouldn’t have minded being a simple, terrible windstorm, without heart or pity. If I can become like that by thrusting this into me, then I shall. May it be so.”  
Anderson fell to his knees and plunged the nail into his chest, screaming. From the wound, things began to spread over his body: thin vines, covered in thorns. They snaked up his chest and dug into his skin, spreading invisibly throughout his body.  
  
“Y-you…” Alucard stepped up and put the Casull to Anderson’s head. “You blasted fool!” With the nearly imperceptible flash of a bayonet Alucard’s arm was severed from his shoulder, and his neck was sliced in two. His body lifted the Jackal and fired a bullet straight through Anderson’s head. From both Alucard’s neck and Anderson’s head tendrils sprouted, one made from blood and the other made of thorns. Alucard scowled at what used to be a man.  
“Thorns…” the Japanese nun muttered fearfully. “The thorns…!”  
“Anderson!” the German said. “Just what have you become?!”  
“His body is no longer that of a man,” Alucard said, reforming his own head. “Now, the only way for both you and I to die and return to dust, is to have this gouged out of us.”   
  
He put his hand over his chest. “The viscus at our heart.”  
Anderson crossed his bayonets and stared down Alucard. His vines swirled around him menacingly. Alucard met his gaze and crossed his guns, and his blood circled behind him. The two monsters began to tear at each other with blades and bullets, each one completely useless on the other. Every bullet wound was wrapped by vines, and every cut melted back together. Alucard attempted to attack Anderson with a Familiar, but his vines crushed it effortlessly. The vampire aimed his gun at Anderson’s heart and fired, only to find a patch of vines caught the spinning bullet. Suddenly Anderson leapt into the air, and the vines blocked the scene from Seras’ view. The gunshots stopped. Suddenly she saw with horror that the Legion of Dracul had caught fire.  
  
“Master!” she shouted. The vines dispersed a little to the sound of faraway explosions, and Seras was able to see the combatants. Half of Alucard’s body was aflame, and Anderson was moving to plunge his bayonet into her master’s heart. Seras vaguely perceived Integra stepping out of her way when she dashed forward.  
“Master! Master!” Anderson’s Catholic pets didn’t move a muscle. They were too struck with fear and the warring monstrosities, but Seras felt no fear. She would save her master alone, undaunted. She was able to grab Anderson’s blade as it slid into Alucard’s flesh.  
  
“Master!” she called, trying to get his attention. Alucard’s eyes were open, but they looked misty. His mind seemed far away. As she tried to rouse Alucard Seras felt the thorny vines slither down her arm. All of a sudden she was burning, and the pain began to consume her. All around them the fires continued to eat away at Alucard’s captive lives, until soon no monster was left standing save those three caught in the middle.  
“Master!” she cried out desperately. “Master!”  
“Keep it down, policewoman.” Seras looked up in surprise. Alucard was looking at her in the same annoyed way he always did. “Your voice carries out as loud as ever. Almost like that of a resounding song.” Seras calmed herself, and felt a tad ridiculous.   
“Master!” she said, relieved. Alucard moved his hand to cover hers, and together they pushed against the blade reaching for his heart.  
  
“Anderson…” he sighed, standing up taller than he had been. “I would not have minded being defeated by you… had it been that day… Had it been that wasteland at sunset, on that day, five hundred and twenty-three years ago… I would have given you my heart. But I cannot do that any longer. You cannot defeat me!” The bayonet snapped in their hands, along with the vines ensnaring Alucard and Seras.   
  
“At any time, it is only a human that can defeat a monster. It must be… a human!”  
Seras backed away and admired her master. His form had shifted again to something black and base as opposed to his flashy red coat or regal chthonic armor. Alucard bared his teeth and hissed, and he charged toward Anderson as a wild animal would. Anderson stretched his vines to tie up the vampire, but Alucard chopped them apart with his gloved hands. He had no guns, no Familiars, and no ghouls. He carried no grace or suavity, and he spoke no words. Anderson and Alucard thrashed against each other relentlessly and violently as they growled at each other and tried to savage the other’s flesh. Alucard pushed himself through the melee and drove his hand deep into   
  
Anderson’s chest until it came out the other side. He ripped the monster’s chest in two, distorted heart in hand, and crushed it as it beat between his fingers.  
The world paused. Everyone watched with their eyes wide and mouths agape. Anderson fell to the ground, and his flesh began to peel apart like papier-mâché and float away on the wind. The sun peaked over the horizon, casting Alucard’s shadow over the broken body. It shimmered on Anderson’s bloodless flesh.  
“You are me!” Alucard screamed at the body. “You are me! I was also the way you are!” Alucard put his hands to his face as blood sobbed from his eyes. “I was also the way you are!”   
  
The strained sound of laughter crawled from Anderson’s body. “Do not weep, fiend. Were you chased by a child?” Alucard looked up, regaining his composure slightly. “Do not weep, fiend,” Anderson continued. “You became a fiend because you didn’t want to cry, right? It is because a man cries until his tears dry up that they become fiends, and are reduced to being monsters, until that’s all they are. So then, laugh. Laugh arrogantly and insolently. Like you always do. I pass on. You keep living on. How much longer must your miserable self-keep living?”  
  
Alucard wiped away his tears and smiled down at Anderson, as requested. “Until the greatness of my past is demolished by the greatness of my future,” he answered cryptically. “But hey, I will see you soon, my archenemy, someday, in Limbo.” Anderson chuckled again, and his body continued to break apart and blow away.  
“I hear voices,” he whispered. “The voices of children…” Seras noticed Integra stabbing a sword, Dracula’s by appearance, into the ground. It made the shape of a cross over   
  
Anderson’s decaying body. Anderson lifted his hand to the sunlight as it fell apart. “I hear voices at play… The children… I must go… They’re all waiting… Maxwell… You mustn’t cry… everyone… Say your prayers… before bedtime…” Iscariot appears to have been thrown into the darkest depths of despair. Integra has turned away from the scene entirely. Seras looked down, unsure how to feel. She felt dark, but felt that did not suit her.  
“Amen…” Anderson finished as the remainder of his head fell away to dust. Alucard smiled down on him.  
“Amen,” he answered, somewhat satisfied.  
“Amen.” A polished boot stomped down on Anderson’s remains. Everyone looked up to see buildings cut at angles and slide off their foundations, crashing into each other.   
  
Lightly glowing wires waved through the air from their wielder.  
A young man placed a cigarette in his mouth. He was well-dressed with slicked-back black hair and a shining monocle. Seras was almost convinced that she was seeing one of the tattooed Nazi woman’s hallucinations, but she knew better. The man standing in front of them was terribly real.  
  
Integra was the one who could bare to say it aloud. “W-Walter! Is that you Walter?!”


	15. The Butcher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning this chapter has a lot more graphic and written imagery. You have been warned!

Walter, now a vision of youthful potency, brought his heel down upon Anderson’s crumbling remains. He locked eyes with Integra.

  
“This is trash,” he said brutishly. “When people die, they become trash. And trash has no need to be mourned. Isn’t that right, Integra?”

  
Seras was completely taken aback by Walter’s words and actions. It did not fit into the cast she’d formed Walter into. “Walter,” she called out to him. “What have they done to you?”

  
“What have they done?” Walter mimicked. “They captured me, made me a vampire, brainwashed me, and sadly enough, forced me to fight against my former master.” He paused, and for the slimmest second Seras almost believed it. “If that were my answer, would it satisfy you, Seras?  
“I stand here without having been given orders by anyone. I stand here as myself. I stand here as Walter C. Dornez. I am planning to cut you up here, at daybreak, with full intent to kill.”  
“Walter…” Integra’s fist tightened. “Why, Walter?!”  
“Do not call me by name!”  
What specifically triggered Yumie wasn’t quite clear: it could have been Walter’s attitude, or the constant shouting, or even just the steep building of tension in only a few short minutes. Whatever it was, Seras felt a surge of motion as the Japanese woman dashed forward, her hand on her weapon.

  
“No, don’t!” Seras shouted, but her warning fell on ears deafened by rage. Yumie drew her blade and charged straight ahead toward Walter, yelling.  
“Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! I don’t give a damn about your master-servant business!” She shifted her blade up to her shoulder, and a strange blue light enveloped her body. “Makes no difference to me!” Yumie disappeared into the blue light as it seemed to carry her through the air at an inhuman speed. It passed through Walter and spat Yumie back out, and in one graceful movement she cleaved through the air that Walter occupied.  
“Shimabara Sword Style, ‘Shoki!’” she pronounced. “I got you!”

  
Walter stood unfaltering. “You got nothing,” he stated, bored. “I got you.” The wires, almost imperceptible, sliced through steel and flesh all at once. The Japanese nun fell into bloody chunks, her life snuffed out instants before she even realized it.  
The other, whom Seras decided to refer to as a man until proved wrong, screamed.  
“Yumie!” he cried, pulling out his gun. In an instant the barrel of another gun pressed against his cheek. At the end of the barrel, which was longer than most swords, was the shady Nazi man Seras recognized from earlier that night. He fired, blowing through the other’s mouth and knocking him off his feet. No one had even noticed the Nazi’s approach.

  
“No one can stand in my way,” Walter said. “I will allow no one to interfere with my revolt.” Alucard didn’t seem to notice any of it, not Walter or Iscariot or anything. He knelt on the ground, watching the scraps of Alexander Anderson float away on the breeze.  
“Get up!” Walter challenged him. “Get up and fight, Hellsing! Alucard!”

  
At first it seemed like silence would answer Walter’s challenge, but suddenly Alucard could be heard chuckling under his breath.  
“Hey there, Reaper!” he said. “You once said Englishmen looked forward to growing old, didn’t you? You said that you declined any glory that was easily won, didn’t you? In your aged form, you were billions, even trillions of times more attractive. What an ugly form that is. Have you become a reaper, both body and soul?”

  
“That’s right,” Walter answered unfaltering. “This world is but a single night’s dream within a much larger battleground. At the moment of daybreak, I have at last become its Reaper! Get up and fight, Alucard!”  
"You and I are both just dogs now," Alucard responed. "Running dogs. Dogs which do not bark for themselves." He pressed his face into the cold ground, bowing to Integra.  
"Orders!" Alucard said. "Give me orders, my lord. I can kill. Without the slightest hesitation, and without the least regret, I can strike someone dead." He raised his head up to see Integra's expression. She appeared stoic, without feeling. "That is because I am a monster. And you are... Integra. I will stand with guns readied. I will take aim with them. I will load ammo in their magazines, pull back their slides, and I will release their safeties. However, any killing will be done at your will. Now, what will it be? Your orders, Director of Hellsing, Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing?!"

  
Integra gave no answer, but simply stood in her place solid as a stone wall.  
"Speak," Walter said, seemingly getting on edge. "Say it!" Integra ignored him, pulled out a cigar and slowly lit it in her mouth. She took a long draw, letting the aroma waver. "Start talking! Tell him, my lady!" She pulled the cigar out of her mouth and stood, taking everything in. Her hand began to shake, and the cigar snapped between her fingers.  
"Search and destroy!" she ordered. "Search and destroy! My servant, I have given you an order! Nothing has changed! Lay waste to all forces that oppose us! Keep pressing forward and smash through any obstacle in your way! No matter who that may be! No matter what that may be! No matter... who... that may be..." Despair began to creep into her voice, but she shut it out. Integra would not entertain grief.  
Alucard's familiars flared around him, dancing in their own demonic light, as he pushed himself off the ground with his fist. His smile was twisted in its satisfaction.  
"Yes, my Master."

  
"Outstanding!" Walter cried, elated. "You truly were a master worthy of my service."  
Integra hardened herself against his words. "I am no longer going to ask 'Why?' or 'What happened?' You have now become my enemy. You have become an enemy of Hellsing. You have become an enemy of Britain! That's what you've done! You must be defeated! You must be destroyed!"  
A high pitched, absolutely giddy German voice projected through the air. "Well said, Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing!" They looked up at the last standing Nazi zeppelin as it descended onto the city street, crashing through the wreckage. "I was wrong to call you an amateur. I won't do it again. You have now at last become my enemy. You have become a powerful force worth beating, and my great and wonderful archenemy." The airship touched down and screamed into the dawn as its door began to open up. "Destiny has shuffled the cards. Come to me! I call!"  
The ramp hit the bloody concrete, and inside they could see Schrodinger standing at the top. "Das Dritte Reich. Seien Sie herzlich willkommen," he said, happily gesturing for their approach.

  
Integra took no time to regard the cat boy, instead setting off immediately toward the ramp. Alucard spoke to her from behind. "Go on. Go ahead. Go and kill them. Go, conquer, and put an end to this." She stopped and half-turned to her servant.  
"Yes," she said. "Off I go to conquer."  
Seras, stunned by all the events happening in such short sequence, approached Alucard. "M-Master..."  
"Go on, Seras. Our master needs a retinue. Go and bring an end to the man's long dream. It has been fifty five years. Morning has now come. I will bring an end to my long night with this man."  
Seras stopped, collecting her thoughts. Of course this was the correct action, if she had taken a moment to steady herself she would have realized this. But if she was to move on unfettered, Seras was going to make sure that she left nothing unsaid.  
"Walter..." she started, feeling infinitely awkward. "Um, this may be strange for me to say, but... um... thanks for all you've done up to now. Take care."

  
Seras had known Walter would not have expected those words, and she felt odd saying them to the man who had betrayed them all. He flinched, his face contorted into something almost like remorse. Had Seras been a little more naive she might have believed that he would fall over and come back to their side right then and there, but by now she knew better.  
He simply closed his eyes, steadied his resolve, and smiled.  
"You too."

  
At that moment Seras wished that her drinking blood had muted her emotions, because she almost started to cry.  
Integra's voice called her back to reality. "Hurry!"  
"Right!" she called back, running to the parallel infantry ramp. Integra stopped for a moment to pull out her rapier, testing its weight in her hand.  
"Walter, farewell!" she called without turning to look at him. "Farewell. Farewell and die." Integra and Seras began to stride up the zeppelin's ramps. Seras stretched out her blood tendrils to reach behind Integra's back, covering her.  
The child Nazi Schrodinger stood waiting for them. "Welcome, madam." Without a word Integra brandished her pistol and shot him through the head.

  
"I'm holding all jokers," Integra declared. "I'm putting an end to this. I call."  
It wasn't very long before small groups of vampire soldiers started harassing them inside the corridors of the dark warship. Their assaults came in waves, largley disorganized and poorly equipped compared to the shock troops that had invaded Hellsing Manor. Their bullets were worthless against Seras, so slow that she was able to protect Integra and kill them at the same time. Some of the soldiers didn't even have ammo, they charged at her with broken rifles and steel pipes. They couldn't so much as touch Seras, and Integra wasn't in enough danger to bother firing her sidearm.  
A vampire came up to them strapped with pinless grenades, charging. Seras knocked him to the side with a sweep of a tendril and let the explosion buffet harmlessly against the steel wallls she pulled to the side. The fire expanded enough to enshroud Seras and Integra for a moment, but it didn't do any real damage. A hail of bullets blocked their progress, and Seras covered Integra before dashing forward and beating their enemies into the walls. One managed to get past her, and Integra cut him down with a swipe of her blade.

  
One wounded Nazi leaned against the wall, watching Seras approach.  
"It's been a long time!" he said joyously. He pulled off his mask and revealed an insane grin. "Are you my death? Are you our deaths?" Seras swept her tendrils along the corridor, slicing the soldiers to bits. They all shared the same blood-crazed smile.  
"Everyone is dying with a smile," Integra noticed. "Yes. They came her to die, after all."  
"If they want to die so badly..." Seras began. "If they want to die so badly, then just hang yourselves! You could have hanged yourselves, fifty years ago!"  
The intercom crackled to life. "I'm afraid we could not have had that, Fraulein," the Major's voice chided. Evidently there was a two-way frequency that he was listening to. "There is no way we could settle for simply dying. That is just how incorrigible we are. There is nobody in the whole world that has need for us. Everybody in the whole world is trying to forget us. But even so, we are still needed by ourselves. We are not about to just 'simply' die. We need more than that. Our deaths require that there be something more than that. Something more, something more! Such is how we have come this far. And now we are here!"

  
Seras started: she spotted a shadowed form standing in wait a little ways down the corridor. A single irridescent eye stared back at her. It was the man from before, the one who met Alucard and Anderson. The one who was with Walter.  
"Something more! There must be something else," the Major continued. "Some other place where we can fight, some other enemy somewhere for us to fight! The world is vast. It is filled with menace and marvel! It is rich to overflowing with conflict and gunfire! There is no doubt that somewhere in this world, there lies a battlefield fertile enough to support us! Our deaths require something -- something even more." Suddenly explosions began to sound, possibly a delayed chain reaction from the suicide bomber's end. "Otherwise, we would be compelled to march on endlessly. Just for us to die. That is why you are precious to us! Such is your value to us! You are magnificent! The Order of the Royal Imperial Church, Hellsing! You are what makes it worth it for us to die, and you are what makes it worth it for us to kill."  
Seras leaned forward, locking eyes with the silent Nazi. "Miss Integra, please go on ahead."  
"Seras..."

  
"Quickly! Go find the Major! We must not let him... we must not let men like him say another word!"  
Integra closed her eyes and nodded minutely. "Don't get killed. I won't permit that, Seras." She put another cigar in her mouth. "I absolutely won't permit that."  
The Nazi raised his hand to the side, indicating something. His finger landed on a small sign with the word 'Hauptquartier' and an arrow pointing to the right.  
"Hmph, such a faithful dog," Integra remarks, throwing away her cigar before even lighting it. She walked up and regarded the Nazi. "Well done." Integra turned to the right and followed the sign.

  
Seras and the Nazi Captain were left alone, each waiting to see what the other might do. The walls to their sides splintered open and burst into flames, casting dancing shadows across the two creatures' bodies. Neither took special notice, it was just another battlefield burning to cinders around them. Seras stomped her foot and flipped two automatic rifles up into her hands. She saw the Captain's hand flex at the hilt of his absurdly long gun.  
Well, Seras thought, at a time and place like this, I might as well shoot somebody. It would seem like a waste otherwise.  
The air shook as gunfire erupted from the two sides, and every bullet fired succeeded in doing nothing to their target. Something got caught in the crossfire and exploded, coughing up a heavy bout of smoke. Seras took the opportunity to leap into the cover and attack the Captain up close.  
Just as she emerged from the concealing haze she felt something wrap around her, blinding and immobilizing her. Two gunshots went off at point blank range, tearing into her flesh and dealing some momentary pain. However, wounds or not, Seras had managed to get up close. She quickly ripped her way out of the Captain's jacket with her blood tendrils and drove him off. Seras gave chase with a victorious grin, confident that she'd already won. Her tendrils dogged the Captain's path, close to impaling him at every angle. He forced them away for a moment with a sweeping kick, but they were hot on his tail.

  
Then suddenly, to Seras' shock and confusion, her tendrils wavered. A strange white wisp trailed out of the Captain's skin. He looked up at her, fangs bared and eyes hellishly incandescant, as his body began to morph into a blazing ivory shadow. His features became both illusory and solid, hard to pin down exactly what was him and what was mere smoke, but the impression left was strikingly formidabble.  
Seras stepped back, taken aback by the vision. It's a FUCKING werewolf.  
The werewolf reared its head with a snarl, moving so fast in so many different directions that Seras couldn't follow his movements before it slammed its maw into her. She shot down the hall like a pinball, smashing the metal wall behind her as well as her rib cage. The air got knocked out of her, as well as a large amount of her blood. The werewolf turned around and appeared to jog down the hallway, evaporating into the air, and then reappeared above Seras and slammed both its feet into her. Seras was blown down two floors and crashed with an avalanche of steel. Every part of her body felt like it was bleeding. She seemed to be paralyzed with shock.  
It's no use, she thinks to herself, watching the wolf man approach. He knocked away a steel gurder casually. He's too strong... It's no use... No use... The wolfman brought up his hands, ready to continue the assault.  
"Hey, now, are you serious?" Seras smelt the burning of a cigarette. "This ain't like you." Her eyes widened at the familiar voice she heard within her veins. "Get up. The woman I know didn't know when to quit." A crate launched toward Seras' head as she felt her Familar arm zip herself into the air. She landed a distance away, unsure of what was going on.

  
"You're such a hopeless bitch. Snap out of it, you bloody fool." Of course, it was him, Seras realized with a wide smile. Who else could it be after all. Her veins warmed like a loving embrace, invigorating her and bringing her back to reality. "Okay, now that your eyes are opened, let's go, young lady!" Pip Bernadotte called out. "Let 'em have it! Let's get this guy together!" Seras pushed herself to her feet, ringing her blood tendril around herself. She could feel Bernadotte's blood coursing around her, filling her up and pushing her forward.  
Seras shot into the air like a bullet feet first into a flying kick. The wolfman deftly dodged it with minimal movement. Bernadotte corrected Seras' momentum to stop her from flying into a wall, and she skid along the floor on all fours.

  
"Not just a point!" Bernadotte instructed. "A surface! Take out the whole surface!"  
She lifted up her Familiar hand and drove it into the floor, and she and Bernadotte spread it across the room. The encircled the wolf man, impaling him from the back.  
Got him!  
"No you haven't!"  
The wolfman shimmered into a white mist and slipped through Seras' tendrils, reaching out and destroying all the boxes around it. Paper bills and shimmering gold rained through the air, and he touched down on one of Seras' tendrils, balancing on one foot.  
"This is too much," Bernadotte noted, baffled. "He's a monster. He's as good as a real-life wolfman, ain't he?"

  
"A werewolf!" Seras remarked. Just then she felt something pressing against her palm on the ground. She picked it up. "A gold tooth... Tooth fillings...?" She looked around at the glittering yellow washing out the air around her. "Then, all of this is..."  
"It sure is. The stuff they stole turning Europe upside down fifty years ago. Everything from gold bullion to wads of money to watches, all scattered about. That filling you've got was probably pulled out of the mouth of some poor fellow in a concentration camp somewhere. Which is to say, that's the kind of people these are. They aren't even so much as a military force. At best, how are they any different than a band of killers? I wouldn't even rate this bunch as high as shit. An invincible force? Knights of steel? Ha! Don't make me laugh!"

  
Suddenly the wolfman kicked a glittering item out of the air, and it shot at Seras as fast as a missile. She caught it, a touch awkwardly, and looked at what it might be.  
"A silver tooth?" she asked, puzzled. "Y-you mean..."  
"What a kindhearted mutt. He's asking you to kill him with that?"  
"S-so then, he intentionally led us here?" The wolfman put up his arms in a fighting pose, and Seras couldn't help but grin. She felt completely idiotic to have given up so easily before, considering she was fighting a suicidal opponent.  
"I get it. He's a war dog that wants to die. What do you say we put him out of his misery?"

  
"If he's a war dog, Mr. Bernadotte, then you've got no room to talk."  
Bernadotte giggled boyishly at Seras' renewed sass. "Without a doubt."  
"Also," Seras added. "Please don't go smoking inside of me." He chuckled guiltily, but she could still smell the nicotine inside her body. It was a strange feeling.  
"Here he comes!" The wolfman's body began to transform into a wisp. "Don't run. Take him head-on."  
"Right!"

  
It reappeared and Seras crossed her arms to block him. Her remaining arm burst open in a spout of blood as she flew back into the wall with a crunch. Dust and filth shrouded her. The pain might as well have been nothing.  
"Go!" Bernadotte yelled into her veins. "Conquer him! Let him have it!" The Frenchman's bravado made Seras smile. "When he attacks, he is also flesh and blood."  
"Not yet!" Seras replied, reaching out and ripping the steel panelling off the wall. She stretched her tendrils over the bomb she had landed against, filled with the devilish desire to kill. "Not yet!"  
Yelling with the exertion Seras hurled the bomb into the air. It spun in a collision course with the wolfman, but it was slow. He punted it back at her, and the area lit up with fire. Of course, Bernadotte had assumed this would be the case. Seras used the concealing flame to get up high, per his influence. She pushed off feet first and fired at the wolfman. He put up his hand, locking his gaze at her approach.  
"He's predicting our moves!" Seras noticed.  
"It doesn't matter."  
"Mm-hmm," Seras agreed. "Let's go!"  
"Yeah! Get him!"

  
Seras contorted her body midair to move her foot back and lead with her Familiar fist instead. The wolfman punched back, and their knuckles met and broke through each other in a shower of bone and gore. The two recoiled for a moment, then they lashed out with their remaining arms. Those collided as well, exploding on impact. Both fighters paused, waiting to see how their opponent would attack next now that they were mutually disarmed.  
The wolfman struck first, sweeping his leg up directly at Seras' head. She quickly opened her vampire jaw and dug deep into the flesh of his shin. Familiar tendrils began to spread up his leg.

  
"I've got you this time for sure!" Seras growled through his muscle. The tendrils spread farther and farther, flickering and dancing like flame.  
A gloved hand reached out from the black flame, flicked the silver tooth through the air, and caught it nimbly between two fingers. Bernadotte smiled vengefully.  
"Wolfman, sir, this is payback from a certain someone fifty years ago." He tightend his fist around the tooth. "Take it." With the borrowed strength of a vampire Bernadotte drove it into the wolfman's chest. The wolfman's dogtag flew off and broke against the floor. He pulled his hand back out, covered in blood, and flipped him off. "That's what you get for messing with another man's woman. Your collar has been sent flying." The wolfman fell to his knees, blood spouting out of his wound like a fountain. He reared back, struggled against his own escaping blood, and collapsed onto his back. "Farewell, war dog!"  
The strange transition upon the fallen beasts face was difficult for Seras to internalize. It seemed to visibly soften, as though he'd been containing all his muscles and only now finally let them go. And when his muscles had freedom, they smiled. The wolfman opened his mouth in a gaping smile of complete joy, and blue flames erupted from his skin and ate his body. Seras simply watched.

  
It's almost like... It's almost like a child having an enjoyable dream. That's right. I'm sure this evening has been a whole nights dream come true for them. Mr. Bernadotte...  
She could feel his essence closing up wounds in her chest. Tendrils waved outside her left breast pocket.  
"Yeah, you're right. Let's go and finish this. All dreams must come to an end." Seras stared down at the immolated corpse of the wolfman one last time, offering the tiniest bit of admiration to the creature that offered her first real challenge as a full vampire, and a slight feeling of gratitude for drawing Bernadotte out into her consciousness. "Go!"  
Seras turned and walked away. Her next goal would be to find Integra, and she had a good idea of where she was. I should pick up a new gun on the way..._______________________________________________________________________  
Butch thought he was a good Conductor. He acted as the in-between for the Composer and all his Reapers, and he would sometimes take the role of Day Seven’s mission and fight whatever Players had lived that long. Most of them died. Some of them lived since the Composer would not let him go all-out. Annabelle had been one of those survivors, and Butch thought she was a fine addition to the Reapers. Yes, Butch thought he was a good Conductor. So when the Composer called him to the throne room in the middle of a Game, he had been confused. The Game was going swimmingly, all the Reapers performed at their peak, every piece was going to the part of the board that Ol’ Georgie ordained. So why the sudden summons?  
The hallways turned around Butch rather than he turn around them. Eventually the hilt of his blade would knock against wood, and he knew it was the door into the throne room because that is what he wanted. He struck his knuckles against the brass door handle. The door opened for him.

  
“My Blind Butcher! Lovely to see you again. Come come, we have much to discuss.” The voice of the Composer was smooth as silk and carried the pitch of a child. Every so often his words would crack under his own excitement, and Butch frequently heard him whistling tunes and putting on some performance as though he carried an audience everywhere he went. Ol’ Georgie had been Composer for as long as Butch had been dead.  
Butch stepped forward, dragging his modified cleaver behind him. He clicked his tongue a few times, let out a high chirp to get an image of where the throne was, and stopped where he thought would be most appropriate. The Composer tweeted back at him.

  
“I’m glad you could make the time in your busy schedule to meet with me today, little bird.”  
“Of course, Composer. What is it you needed from me?”  
“Ahp ahp!” the Composer shouted. “You know the rules birdy. We engage in business only after a riddle and a snack.”  
Butch let out a sigh. “My mistake. Give me your riddle.”  
“Heehee, I’ve been working on this one for a while! What eats through eyes and looks through legs?”  
Butch thought about this for a moment. “A pervert?”

  
“Correct! Here, have this sandwich.” Butch heard the scuffling of tiny feet and smelled a Noise approaching him. It nuzzled his hand and he reached out to grasp the promised sandwich. Its aroma was heavy with mustard, and the bread felt fresh. He could not identify the meat inside, but it tasted like sweet pork.  
“Now, on to business,” Ol’ Georgie said as Butch took a large bite from his gift. “Butch, dear boy, the Higher Ups have contacted me recently. I am to ascend with them at the end of the week.” Butch stopped chewing, reflected on this, and swallowed his unfinished meat. His blood heated up a few degrees.  
“Congratulations sir.”

  
“Hmph, quite,” Ol’ Georgie said with some bitterness. “Mr. Nayake said the same thing. I suppose it is a great honor, being accepted into godhood. I can’t imagine it will be very easy to continue my experiments, but no matter.”  
“Experiments?” Butch repeated, swallowing another bite of his sandwich. The muscles in his neck were starting to tingle. It was a strangely pleasant feeling, almost like an adrenaline shot.

  
“Oh yes. How I would test the Players, experiment with how far I could stretch them. You remember your Game, how the Noise would hunt you and the other Players only in your sleep. And of course you must remember the kerfuffle that was Miss King’s Reaper Game.” Butch didn’t reply, he was too busy finishing his sandwich. “Like the new recipe do you? Here, have another.” Another Noise approached Butch, and he snatched the sandwich off of its back.  
“In any case, I suppose Annabelle will be one of the Reapers that They consider for my replacement. Richard won’t do it, he’s been turning down promotions for centuries… Then again, I will be a Higher Up by that time, so I will have some influence on that decision won’t I? Hmm…”  
Butch spoke through his bites. “Mm… Won’t I be your replacement?”

  
“That’s what I summoned you to discuss, my little birdie.” Butch heard that old spark of inspiration on Ol’ Georgie’s tongue. “This ascension presents a unique opportunity for one last great experiment, and you play a key role in it.” Butch finished the second sandwich. “Here, have some more.”  
More Noise flanked Butch, and he reached out to them. They were holding bowls, and inside those bowls was some kind of warm meat. It tasted like sweet pork, but was completely raw. He bit a chunk off of one, testing the taste without any garnishing, and his entire body shivered at the flavor. It was delicious. He snapped a bone from the main body of the buffet and gnawed at its tender flesh.  
*munch munch* “What sort of experiment?” *slurp*

  
“It’s rather simple actually. You see Butch, in my time I’ve seen many strange things. I’ve watched humanity evolve in its own ingenious ways, turning horses into carriages, carriages into cars, and cars into airplanes. I’ve seen Reece’s various dubious inventions, and I think that the rest of the world will catch up with even the bizarre things he makes. But one thing has always held some intrigue for me. Not too long ago, hardly more than a century, we had a little vampire problem. You remember?”  
Butch nodded. “You had Richard and Nayake deal with it.” He emptied one of the bowls and tossed the Noise aside. It seemed as though the more he ate, the hungrier he got.  
“The lesser ones, yes. But never the master, that creature escaped London. I must admit, I was enraptured by the beast known as a vampire. A human that had transformed into something so monstrous, so alien to life, that its very species changed. Through the relatively simple act of drinking blood it is given access to a nearly immeasurable amount of power! We Reapers have to undergo an entire trial in order to gain our power, but they only have to eat. Eat people, specifically.

  
“How’s the meat, by the way? To your liking?”  
Butch suddenly became aware that the Composer was standing at his side, watching him. He paused and lowered his hands from his mouth.  
“So I began to wonder,” Ol’ Georgie continued. “If a human could become so strong just by eating a human, what might happen to a Reaper? Now obviously a vampire can’t suck our blood, we have none that they can taste, so I thought I might just skip the middle man. See what happens.”  
Butch felt himself begin to shake. Juices were dripping from his face, and only now that his reverie had been interrupted that he realized its iron scent was distinctly not like any animal. He laid his hands on the contents of the bowl in front of him, and as he ran them along it he began to put together its shape, mangled as it was now.  
“This…” he muttered waveringly. “This is a child.”

  
“A Player, one that lost. I had some special Noise cooked up so they could paralyze them and bring them back here. I thought a living specimen would provide the best results. The first one was still alive from the RG, I thought a control would be necessary. How did they compare? A difference in texture perhaps, maybe more gamey?”  
Butch stumbled backwards, horror enveloping him. He tried to wretch but his throat had completely closed up. His skin was crawling over his body, slithering like a mass of caterpillars.  
“So,” Ol’ Georgie said, sounding amused by Butch’s writhing. “How does it feel to have two other souls inside your body?”  
“I feel…” Disgusted. Betrayed. Enraged. “I feel…” Wretched. Nauseated. Abominable.  
“I feel strong.” Butch began to flex, and he was surprised by the energy he felt pop back at him. His bones felt harder, his flesh felt more solid. Even his senses seemed heightened somehow.

  
“Heh,” the Composer chuckled. “I had a feeling. We are only souls after all, mere ghosts. If a ghost eats a ghost, do they gain the power of two ghosts? And what if they eat a human, do they become more solid? It would seem…” He poked at Butch’s abdomen. “Both hypothesis were true. Oh my!” A bit of drool slipped out of Butch’s mouth. He could still smell the meat, the human flesh. It smelled good, and he was starving. “It seems you’ve taken on the gluttony of a vampire as well. Interesting. Well, I shan’t let my loyal Conductor go hungry!” He snapped his fingers and Butch heard a door open.  
“Let me go you stupid monsters! I’m going to get you for this!” It was a girl’s voice. She sounded distinctly adolescent, and smelled lean. “Who are these tossers huh? More Reapers? What’s this supposed to be than huh, some twisted mission?”

  
The desire to eat scratched at Butch, but he hesitated. His mouth hung open, watering onto the floor at the smell of the Player. He told himself this was wrong, that he couldn’t do it. But then Ol’ Georgie gave the order.  
“Eat her, Butch.” And Butch never disobeyed the Composer. He was a good Conductor.  
He leapt toward the girl and sliced her belly open with his cleaver. She screamed for a second or two before he cut off her windpipe between his jaws and tore her throat out, swallowing it hole.

  
The Composer’s voice rose above the sounds of Butch’s feasting. “I want you to leave London, Butch. I want you to travel all of Eurasia, maybe even the world if you can, and eat your way through the Games. Gain strength; eat people, Players, and Reapers alike. And one day, when you think you are strong enough, I want you to find your way back to London. And I want you to eat my successor, whomever it may be.”  
And Butch obeyed. He escaped the London Reaper Game the same night that Ol’ Georgie ascended, and he made his way onto the mainland of Europe. For years he would eat Players and people alike, regaining solidity until he was eventually a permanent aspect of both the Real Ground and the Under Ground. After a few years, having devoured a little over a thousand Players, he decided to eat a Reaper. It was delicious, so he decided to eat more. He worked his way through France, Germany, India, China, Russia, and everything in between until over a decade later he found a new smell.  
It was like the stench of a corpse, but it moved. He followed it onto a ship, and before Butch knew it he was in the air. He ate a few corpses, found them unsatisfying, and decided to wait. Wait until he smelled something familiar.  
___________________________________________________________________________  
Richard was always proud of Butch. He was skilled with a blade, even if it was an unconventional one, and that was largely thanks to Richard’s training. When Butch had been chosen as the next Conductor he had come straight to him with probably the biggest smile of satisfaction Richard had seen him make. Even after that the two would spar to keep their skills honed for the Games, and after decades the two were so evenly matched that they would fall to the ground in exhaustion before either landed a critical hit on the other. Sometimes Richard would laugh at the absurdity of it all, his frail body and old longsword against a veritable giant with a cleaver the size of a small person. On occasion Butch would chuckle as well, despite his serious demeanor.  
Now nobody was laughing.

  
The carpet of bodies interfered with Richard’s footwork, constantly threatening to trip him up as the Butcher assailed him relentlessly. Richard had to use both his hands just to keep his blade steady against the blows that Butch’s iron slab delivered. Years ago Butch had to two hand his blade in order to bear its incredible weight, but now he’d somehow become strong enough to swing it with one hand as though it were a stick. This gave Butch the advantage in flexibility, allowing him to swing at angles much more comfortably than Richard could block.  
Richard’s main advantage came from something fairly simple: his sword had a point, and Butch’s did not. A cleaver could not stab Richard’s flesh, it would only be a blunt force, but Richard was able to keep some distance between them with a succession of stabs.

  
No words were shared between the duelists.  
“We need to get in there!” Amy insisted. “He can’t take that thing on his own, it’s a fucking beast!”  
“I agree with tie-dye,” Oni added. “Us standing around like this is stupid.”  
“No,” Rocky said. “Richard gets to go first. He was the most effected by the Butcher’s betrayal, he deserves to try and kill him first.”  
“They are both from the Middle Ages,” Megan said. “I’m pretty sure them going one-on-one is part of the whole chivalry thing.”  
Amy slapped herself in the head. “Oh God, this is a Darth Vader-Obi Wan Kenobi thing isn’t it? Neku, what—“ Neku was already dashing toward the fight.

  
“Screw chivalry, there are people here!” The civilians were watching from the church windows, cowering behind pews and returning to their desperate prayers. A bombardment of fireballs exploded on Butch’s back, burning away large chunks of his hair and scorching his coat. Neku got up close to slash at him, but he caught his wrist and crushed it. Neku cried out and dropped the Pins that were in that hand, including his healing Pin. Butch turned his head to Neku for a second, snapping his jaw open as though he would swallow him whole. The flesh and bone seemed to split like a snake’s and Neku could see bits of skin and hair caught between his teeth.

  
Richard took the second that Butch’s attention was off of him to slide beside his giant cleaver and slit across his arm pit up to the shoulder bone. It was enough to make Butch wince, but he didn’t drop his weapon. Suddenly Richard felt an arm wrap around him and he was crushed into Butch’s torso. He felt his spine groan under the pressure, and he couldn’t move his sword enough to make an attack.  
A bolt of energy struck against Butch’s face and Amy knocked his legs out from under him with her yoyo. “Alright, Rich had his chance to kill him. Now we fight!”  
“Brad, music!” Brad turned the boom box on to full blast, spiking everyone’s adrenaline.  
Neku escaped Butch’s grasp in the fall and scrambled away, abandoning his dropped Pins and tuning out the screaming pain in his hand. His mind ran at fifty miles an hour as he tried to analyze the situation: half his Pins were out of his reach, currently underneath a Reaper and an old freaky ex-Conductor with a snake mouth and a cleaver that could have come from an anime. He still had Frantic Mall, Egg Bomb, Meteor Spike, and Local Fire, Distant Sea. That wasn’t much, but he could make it work. He just had to stay at a distance.

  
“Rock, Tie-Dye, get in there and get Butch off of Richard! Keep the pressure on,” Oni was yelling. “Megan, Neku, we gotta blast the shit out of him while he’s occupied! Boom Box, I hope you have some REALLY good fight music. Make it as loud as possible, I want Butch blind and deaf!”  
Brad switched out tapes and started blasting the most indistinguishable screamo metal Neku had ever heard. His ears started to ache, so he could only imagine what the guy with heightened hearing was feeling. He ran to the collapsed pile of cars and started touching all of them with various Pins. Meanwhile Oni and Megan were shooting at Butch as rapidly as their energy could permit.  
Under the barrage of fire Butch wasn’t able to react as quickly as usual, allowing Rocky to grapple him from behind and toss him off of Richard, who was heavily bruised but not quite paralyzed. Amy skated around the length of the courtyard, kicking up gore and guts from under her as she sped around Butch’s flank while Richard and Rocky charged him head on. With Brad’s music pounding against his sensitive ears he was only able to hear Amy coming up from behind him, making him turn his back and swing to block her yoyo. He barely perceived the air moving behind him fast enough to block Richard’s blade, but not Rocky’s fists. He took a blow to the side of the head, further damaging his ear, and another to the throat. He held his ground and kicked out where he believed Rocky was, knocking the wind out of the Reaper and giving him a moment’s peace.

  
Richard continued to stab at Butch, managing to pierce his flesh enough to draw real blood. Except Butch didn’t seem to be bleeding regularly: his wounds oozed with greyish-brown sludge, like the fluids in his body had been stagnating for years and congealed into one repugnant humor. Rocky got up, forcing himself to breathe, and saw the wounds oozing. He squinted, imagining that he saw thick, bone-like worms squirming just beneath the wound. He pushed the thought from his mind, convinced that he’d seen wrong, and continued the assault.  
Neku yelled out from the pile of cars, trying to project his voice above the obscenely loud metal. “Keep him still for a second!” He stretched out the palm of his good hand, and the entire pile-up of vehicles lurched forward toward Butch. Neku flicked at a Pin and sudden bursts of air through the hunks of steel into the air, arching over the fight. He touched another Pin, and boulders appeared in the air above the cars, slamming them down at terminal velocity.

  
The others saw what Neku was doing and made one full effort to immobilize Butch. Rocky planted his knee into Butch’s back and felt something snap under it before retreating. Amy wrapped her yoyo string around his body and pulled it taught, barely managing to dig in her heals enough to keep from being thrown across the block. Seeing an opportunity, Richard made one last swipe at Butch and plunged his blade straight through his belly. He twisted the hilt and swept it to the side, carving straight through his abdomen and spewing ooze over the ground. Richard leapt away from him, landing on his back.

  
The Butcher did not move, but the things inside him did. In the instant before the vehicles landed on him, a mass of flesh and bone burst out of his gaping wound. A hundred pairs of eyes looked out at the world, a hundred mouths drank in the air, and limbs writhed in an orgy of humanity.  
They all only saw this for a moment, hardly long enough to even register what it was, before Neku’s barrage landed on Butch and exploded in a plume of fire and metal.  
Brad turned down the music and switched to a CD that refreshed everyone. Amy skated around the burning stack of twisted metal and picked up Neku’s Pins. She returned them to him, and with a tap Neku reset the bones in his wrist.  
“Dude,” she said, a little awestruck. “That was fuckin’ baller.”

  
“Yeah,” he said, winded from the effort. “Honestly wasn’t sure if it would work. I’ve never tried to use that many Pins at the same time.”  
Megan helped Richard off the ground, wiping the grime from his clothes. “You okay?”  
“No,” Richard said. “No I am not.” She wrapped her arms around Richard’s neck. Both of them were trembling. Oni sat down on the acrid dirt and pulled a flask out of his coat. He took an unhealthy swig from it, choking a bit and coughing from the burning in his throat. Rocky rubbed his bleeding knuckles.

  
“Hey guys…” Brad said watching the smoldering rubbage. At the very bottom, in a small crevice between two folded cars, a charred arm was scraping at the dirt. A face, burnt so deeply that it looked more like a black skull, inched out of the hole. One of its eyes was oozing out of the socket, but the other appeared undamaged. It was brown, and was looking at Neku.  
The body whimpered cringingly. “H-heeelp… M-m-meeee.” It was a girl’s voice. “H-h-help-p-p-p me,” she pleaded. Her blackened boney fingers grasped at the ground, desperate to pull herself out, but completely devoid of strength.  
“God help her,” Brad gasped. “She’s still alive!”  
Amy covered her mouth. “Where did she come from?”

  
“She must have come out of the church…”  
“No, that doesn’t make sense,” Neku said. “Why would anyone come out during that fight? That’s insane. This isn’t right, I don’t trust this.” The Reapers watched the small girl struggle under the weight of several tons of metal, calling out for help. It was difficult to tell, but she looked about the size of a preteen. Richard thought her voice almost sounded the slightest bit familiar.  
“Who is she looking at?” Megan asked.  
“The Living Player,” Rocky answered. “I think.”  
Megan walked toward Neku, watching the girl. She waved her arms, trying to get the girl’s attention, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Heeeey!” Megan screamed. The girl made no sign that she heard her.  
Megan turned to the others. “I think she really is alive.” Oni put his flask back in his jacket pocket. He stretched out his wings and drew them back inside himself, moving into the RG.

  
“Oi,” he called, and the girl turned her eye to him. She reached out to Oni, pleading weakly. Oni looked at Megan and shrugged. “I didn’t see anybody else. Unless she was in one of those cars, or was hiding under the bodies. I suppose the corpses could have cushioned the impact.”  
“That’s unlikely,” Rocky said skeptically. “This smells like a trap to me.”  
“What do you think, Butch turned into a little girl and magically got his eyesight back?” Megan countered. She drew in her Reaper wings and entered the RG. The girl immediately noticed her, and started pleading to her instead.  
“H-heee… Heeellp meee.”  
“Shhh,” Megan cooed soothingly. “It’s alright sweetie. You’re safe now, we can help you.”  
“I-it huuuurts,” the girl sobbed.  
Megan grimaced. “I can make the pain go away. The pain can go away, and you and I can meet again in a few days. It’ll be really nice, I promise.” She walked forward to the girl, hands clenched and shaking.  
“Oh God,” Brad said, turning away. “I can’t watch.”

  
Neku watched as the Reaper approached the dying girl, intent to pull her into the Reaper Game. She seemed alive, acted like someone in the RG would, but how did she get there? It didn’t make any sense. And then Neku remembered the Player Pin he kept under his collar. He’d completely forgotten it was there because he never used it, but now at the last possible second he realized it was right there, collecting the thoughts of the living. He focused on the girl as Megan knelt down and placed her hands on her charred skull.  
“Get away from her!” Neku shouted. “I can’t read her, she’s not alive!”

  
It was too late though. As Megan readied herself to snap the girl’s neck, her back exploded. Bodies reached out, some looking almost healthy while others were completely skeletal, and sunk their teeth into Megan’s flesh. A blood-curdling scream escaped her throat before the bodies tore her apart and swallowed her in chunks.  
“NOOO!” Richard screamed.  
“MEGAN!” Oni jumped to his feet.  
Rocky’s voice was caught in his throat. Veins pulsed against his skin, and the tapewyrm began to wriggle to life in response. The three flew toward her as fast as they could, beating into the bodies that devoured Megan in the vain hope that they might find her. As they did the mound of flaming vehicles pulsated outward, and something pushed itself into the open air, knocking the Reapers away with the bat of a paw made entirely of human bodies.

  
Amy vomited at the sight of the meshed abomination, a terrible amalgamation of living and dead tissue. Hair of all colors draped the beast in patches, some of it long and wavy, some short and straight. The skin on its tainted collation of flesh was like a quilt of many colors, some natural and some unnatural. Arms and legs twitched at the air like antennae all over its body. It lifted itself on its haunches and let out a ghastly roar with a thousand voices, and its jaw opened wide enough to swallow a bus. Inside were layers upon layers of human teeth, jagged and misshapen in an order they were not designed for.

  
There were more eyes covering the creature that was Butch than one could count, and they were all looking at Brad while he stumbled to reach his pockets in shock. As Amy forced herself to get up and stop vomiting, she saw it pounce toward her. Out of instinct she skated out of its way, but when she spun around to fight she realized it had not meant to land on her.  
One of the mouths had bitten straight through Brad’s stereo, leaving it to rust under the shower of blood as he was consumed by the people that made up Butch’s flesh. Amy’s world froze on that moment as she watched her closest friend be eaten alive. His body shuddered and eventually went completely limp, until all of it had been slurped up. Her legs weakened and she fell on her knees. Her entire body was shaking violently as she denied the universe itself. A silent cry strained her tongue, but she found no voice to carry it. Tears blinded her completely, and she was too dumbfounded to even blink. All of a sudden Amy's voice flooded back and rushed out.  
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHH!”  
_______________________________________________________________________  
After the adrenaline wore out Annabelle collapsed out of the sky. She bounced off some smoking rubble and landed on a light post. She began to slide off, snagged one of her rib bones on the pole, and hung there for a moment half-conscious.  
Her Noise floated toward her and unhooked her from the pole, gently lowering her to the ground. It investigated Annabelle's charred and broken body, checked for bleeding wounds, and picked her back up.  
Annabelle's eye fluttered. Her Tamed Noise was a blur of color, a vague outline of a human body enveloped in dancing light. Reality was ebbing in and out.

  
"... Jacky," she struggled to gasp with air from a single functioning lung. "Baths..." The Noise made no visible acknowledgement of the Composer's words, but trailed off toward Reaper HQ. It ducked around the rubble and ascended into the labrynthine interior, guiding itself through the hallways. Eventually it reached a large open room with pools of fluid layed out in a grid. Annabelle was dropped into one of these pools, and she slowly sank as the clearish liquid surged into her flesh.

  
The feeling was like acid burning through you, except backwards. That was the way Oni had always described it, and Annabelle could never think of a better way to describe the sensation of a healing bath. The charred flesh covering her body softened and turned more pinkish. Blood began pouring from the wounds again, reddening Annabelle's vision. Her missing eyelid began to crawl its way back to life across her cornia.  
Once Annabelle felt her collapsed lung reinflate she decided it was safe to resurface. It was always a little difficult to breach the surface because the healing fluid made a thin gelatinous film just over the top. Reece said it was the blood and dead meat that your body cast off in the pool, and Annabelle was inclined to believe him given the smell these things gave off. It took all the steam and incense they could get their hands on to make this place bearable to sit in for hours on end. The idea of sitting in a bath for hours made Annabelle cringe.  
The idea for the healing baths themselves had been Annabelle's. After years of watching Reapers die from lasting wounds, and then dealing with Seras baby the Reapers and keep them from getting injured altogether, she thought up the idea to have a permanent way to recover from even the most grievous wounds.

  
She tested blinking her regrown eyelid; it didn't quite close all the way, but the muscles moved correctly. She brought up her hand, still missing skin, fingernails, and small chunks of flesh, and touched her face. There was the distinct sting of an open wound everywhere Annabelle prodded. At least her skull wasn't in open air anymore.  
Her other arm was still just that: an arm. Annabelle didn't know if the hand would even grow back now that she thought about it, no one had ever tested the baths that far. Normally even Rocky would keep his body in one piece. Mangled, but connected.  
"Kiryu," she hissed as though the name were a curse. "How dare he force me to-" Annabelle started coughing in the middle of her sentence. She dipped her head back into the pool and gulped down some of the fluid. It had no discernable taste, but it always left a microbe-thin layer on whatever it touched. The stuff stuck with you until you were completely healed, that was its purpose.  
The Tamed Noise had not left the pool side. It wavered there, hunched on the tile floor, watching Annabelle. She smiled and reached out to it, stroking its flaming hair. The Noise made no sound, but Annabelle perceived a shifting of its weight into her palm.  
"Thank you," she said softly, leaning her head towards it.

  
A burning cord reached out and placed something in Annabelle's hand. It was her other hand.  
"Oh good, you picked this up! Let's see now..." She slid the exposed bone down into her hand's wrist and submerged it. The slipping tingle worked its way up Annabelle's arm very slowly, rebuilding and connecting an entire network of tissue and nerve fibers.  
"It'll take a little while for that to work," Annabelle explained to the Noise. "If it works at all." The Noise shuffled quietly on the edge, poking the gelatin surface. Its features were expressionless.

  
"Heh, there's no need to worry," Annabelle said. "Even if it doesn't work, it'll be alright." Suddenly Annabelle shot up like a rod and bit down to block her yelp. She grabbed her leg and pushed the bone back inside. "I... hah, I forgot about that."  
After a few moments letting the pain subside Annabelle let herself lean back and rest her head. She cupped her hand and splashed fluid onto her head a few times. The Noise's core manifested and lay down next to Annabelle's head.  
Annabelle looked into the Noise's burning girlish face. It smiled at her, the orange spots on its cheeks flexing away. Its hair hung loose and draped over its neck like a curtain of embers over a log.  
"Heh," Annabelle laughed nostalgically. "There you are Jacky."

  
"Hey Anny," Jacky said with her goofy grin.  
"You still look so young," Annabelle commented, tracing the smoothness of the fire. "Still a child. I must look so old to you now."  
"Oh hush honey, you look great," Jacky retorted. Annabelle splashed more fluid on her face.  
"I certainly feel old," she sighed. "The Higher Ups Themselves... ordered me dead. Me! What did I ever do? I've only done my job."  
Jacky's smile simmered away. She scratched her ear awkwardly. "You did do that awful thing to that girl Seras Victoria."  
"Why would that matter? Ol' Georgie did far worse things. He forced Bob into being a Reaper, sent us to assassinate Players, even... well. You know."

  
Jacky looked away. "... Uh huh."  
Annabelle immediately regret bringing it up. "I know, I'm sorry. But still, you see my point. Ol' Georgie did all that and now he's one of Them. At least what I did to Seras was justified! Besides, if that was the problem why would they wait until now? No, it couldn't be that."  
"I s'pose whatever you did ain't too 'portant now, is it?"

  
"I suppose you're right. What should we do? Assuming Reece beats Kiryu, surely they'd just send another assassin. There are stronger Composers in the world."  
"But Keerioo ain't alone, is he?" Jacky pointed out. "There's that other boy came with him."  
"Hmm, true. The Living Player is unique, I doubt many other Composers have one of those. Its hard to say what his limits are. The kid isn't even in any of the Game records. None that I've seen anyway. The timing might have something to do with it. All these vampires can't just be mere coincidence. It must be related."  
"Could've been timed to split yer focus. Attack you with them vampires and them Japs."

  
"But that would mean the Higher Ups knew the vampires were coming in advance. Then again, they are gods. I suppose their knowledge of the future wouldn't be limited."Annabelle stirred the pool with her hand and rubbed it on her head. The muscle was smoothing out at least.  
"Wow, I forgot how good that stuff is," Jacky marvelled.  
"Yeah, it's designed to work fast." She lifted her other arm out to see if it was healing. The hand was completely gone, dissolved into the gelatin, and the bone was silver now rather than black. The flesh had only gone up a little over an inch.  
"Oh no..." Jacky said.  
Annabelle took a deep breath and forced herself to smile. "It'll be fine," she reassured her friend. "I need a sword right now more than a fist anyway." Jacky remained unconvinced. She touched the exposed bones, looking dejected.  
"If I hadn't burnt this off, maybe you'd heal properly."

  
"Hey, this isn't your fault," Annabelle chastised. "I told you to, it was my decision. All that dead weight could have been disastrous in the fight. You didn't do anything wrong." She brought the bones up to her face and looked over them. Not exactly strong as steel, but they were pointed.  
"What are you planning on doing with those anyway?" Jacky sounded concerned. Annabelle glanced sideways at her.  
"I'm going to kill with them. Kiryu, the Living Player, Seras, everyone who would get in my way." She paused, rubbing her finger along the bone. "Everyone."  
The Noise burned in silence.


	16. Loss

 

"Amy!"

Two young children dashed through their school playground. The girl had stolen the boy's lunch and was sprinting with his sandwich flapping against her face.

"Amy!"

Teenagers tumbled from the sky, tied together with a climbing clip and a bungie cord that the girl disconnected from their belt. She gripped the release line for their parachute as they reached the arch of the jump and screamed joyously. The boy only screamed.

"Amy!"

A semitruck slammed into the side of their rental car. Both the boy and the girl tried to cover each other, but the brick wall of a barber shop crushed them into each other and fused their bodies with metal.

"Amy!" Neku repeated again, but she wasn't responding. Amy had curled into a kneeling fetal position and became completely unreachable. He cursed and turned back to the fight, narrowly dodging the rubble that the Butcher thing was hurling while also overwhelming Richard and Rocky at close range. It batted Rocky away effortlessly with its massive paw, all the while the bodies making up its form grasped at the air to pull him in and devour his body. Richard was riding his Noise around the beast, slashing away at its extremities, though all that really accomplished was making the Butcher's imposing shape more defined.

Neku brought down another rain of lightning and stones, but nothing seemed to faze the creature. It didn't even flinch when Oni's fireballs blew chunks out of its hide. If the Butcher felt pain, it was not showing.

"This isn't working!"

"No shit kid!" Oni shouted back at him. "If you got a better plan I'm all ears!"

"I..." _I really wish I did,_ he thought. Neku had fought huge monsters before, hell one of them had been Joshua kind of, but all those had been slow and were easy to dodge. Butch, whatever he was at this point, was huge and much faster than something that size had any right to be. Neku had a pretty good idea what a lost battle was, and at that moment this was one of those battles.

He shook his head. That kind of attitude was toxic, and Neku had no time for it. He dashed to the side, waving Pins madly in an effort to contain the raging abomination between tumbling boulders and spears of ice. A whirlwind launched Rocky into the air and he hammered the Butcher with a double elbow drop. The attack was shrugged off passively and the Reaper was blown away by a series of headbutts from a dozen weathered skulls. A mound twitched in the Butcher's flank, and suddenly a spire of contorted bodies shot out toward Richard. They quickly grappled the Noise and devoured it, leaving the Reaper a mere moment to leap to safety. He glided down to the carpet of bodies and turned on a dime, sword in hand. Rocky haggardly came to his side, littered with wounds leaking Noise tendrils. Neku teleported between them and tapped both with a Pin. Their wounds closed, but nothing could be done for exhaustion. They had been fighting a slew of foes all night with very little time to rest. Neku, being the only one with a living body and having gotten maybe ten hours of sleep in the last week, was at the end of his adrenaline reserve.

"Ah hell..." The Butcher's massive fist tore through the carpet of bodies, the asphalt below, and into the three's position. A series of ear splitting snaps and cracks told Neku that most of his bones were now broken, and then he blacked out when his lower spine connected with a brick wall.

Consciousness came and left in spasms. Neku could not think, nor hear, nor feel anything below his arms. His vision darkened between sights of the Butcher lurching closer, ever closer. A few balls of fire denoted Oni trying to fend off the monster, but it paid him no mind. Each pair of eyes among the thousand seemed to be absorbed by Neku for reasons beyond his knowing. As though he was something it had never seen before. Its many mouths watered, creating a snail trail of bloody drool. It's fetid breathe ruffled Neku's hair now, the Butcher was so close. What was it waiting for? All those dead, blind eyes, sensing him, waiting. Its posture seemed to betray... disappointment?

Even if he had the mental faculties to consider this without passing out again, Neku wasn't given the opportunity. A wire circled Neku's chest and quickly pulled him away, seconds before the Butcher lunged maw first into the wall. He skipped over bodies and pools of blood as Amy reeled him to safety. A groan was all he could offer as way of thanks; meanwhile Amy grabbed his healing Pin and tapped it against him a couple times, returning the sensation to his torso and legs. They all hurt like an egg supporting a concrete block, but he could feel them.

"Congrats Phones," Amy said as she turned to the Butcher, rearing its many headed figure. "You're gonna witness the climactic end to my story. You better remember to tell your grandkids."

A series of disembodied arms exploded out of each other, more rotten and black than the one that held it, and at the very end of the line was the Butcher's cleaver. It swung through the air effortlessly, sparking against the ground with a loud grating. Amy wrapped her yoyo wire around her finger and spun it in a circle of white light.

Both weapons speared toward their targets; the yoyo landed home and burrowed into the crevices between bone and flesh, propelling Amy toward it and narrowly around the string of arms. She sped around the Butcher's many legs, but it saw past her scheme and forced the yoyo out of its body with a burst of coagulated bodily fluids. It thrashed at her like a wild tiger with the tail of a scorpion, but of all the combatants Amy was the one who could very nearly match the monster's speed. Blade and yoyo clashed with explosions of fire and lightning, and Oni took potshots from behind.

Meanwhile, Richard climbed out of the window he had flown through when the three of them were knocked away. He took a moment to observe the battle: the Player was back in play, Oni appeared largely unharmed and continued his assault, and the Living Player was recovering a distance away, injured but not incapacitated. And Rocky...

"Shite, Rock!" He leapt from the building and ran over to where he saw the top half of Rocky's mangled body. Nearby lay a shattered street lamp, and the lower half of Rocky was past that. But that, shockingly, was the least horrific sight: the two halves were still connected by an intertwined chord of Black Noise twisting against itself with a hot hiss. The Tapewyrm was doing its job, keeping Rocky alive, but it was not meant to have this amount of free space. It would grow back to its full size in open air.

Richard knelt by Rocky's head and lifted him. "Rocky, you must get up and put yourself back together. If you pass out..."

Rocky pushed his hand away. "Relax. I'm awake." His eyes squinted at the fight taking place mere meters away from them. "I'm wide awake."

"Good," Richard said, relieved. "Than get up. I'll fetch Neku to heal you and..."

"Richard." A Noise tendril wrapped around his ankle. "What the hell are we doing?"

"What? What are you one about man, we're in the middle of a fight!"

"I know that. But why?" Richard wasn't sure what he was trying to say. "We're fighting Butch, man. Fucking BUTCH. That thing was our Conductor. Now it ate Megan."

"I know, that's why..."

"No, I don't think you know!" he suddenly shouted. "You don't understand at all! Why the hell do you think Butch is a big monster made of human bodies now?" Rocky paused, but Richard didn't have an answer.

"I think Ol' Georgie did that to him," he answered himself.

"What?!" Richard was taken aback. "Rock, that's ridiculous!"

"Is it? Is it honestly so ridiculous to imagine a sick fuck like Ol' Georgie doing that? He sure didn't have any scruples toward forcing Bobby into becoming a Reaper after he won the Game. Yeah, that's right, Bobby! You forgot about him didn't you?"

"No! What? I wouldn't forget Bob!"

"Bullshit! This whole week I've been the only one who gave a shit that Bobby died. Huh, you forget about that too?! Seras MURDERED him a few days ago! Our old Composer who you all seem to love so much beat his head into the dirt as our Producer watched! He didn't do a goddammed thing to help!" The Noise jerked and lifted Rocky's torso into the air. His skin was a lifebed of activity, surging and tearing under the force of the Tapewyrm.

"I'll even bet Annabelle sent him knowing he would die! Why would she care, none of the other Composers ever gave a shit about Bob! Ol' Georgie forced him into Reaperhood, Annabelle sent him to die, Seras killed him, and then everyone just forgot about it like he never existed! It's all about Seras or Neku or vampires or all this other shit! I bet you aren't going to forget Megan so quickly! You and Malcolm were real gungho about avenging her! Where's that anger for Bobby, huh? Why does fucking Victoria get a pass?!"

"Rocky, I..." Guilt and confusion were stirring in Richard's stomach.

"What was his name? Prove to me that you didn't forget Bobby and tell me his damned full name!"

"I... I don't know it. I never asked."

Rocky's legs exploded into a flurry of tendrils and serpentine tails, rending every bit of flesh and bone. His skin bulged and turned black and red.

"ROBERT MACLEOD! HIS NAME WAS ROBERT MACLEOD, AND HE WAS MY ONLY FUCKING FRIEND IN THIS DAMN JOKE OF AN AFTERLIFE!" The sudden explosion of noise and energy drew the Butcher's attention, as it disengaged from Amy and dashed at the quickly disintegrating body of Rocky. It stretched its paw toward him, and Rocky's arm popped into a meaty mesh of skin and released a bundle of huge Noise tendrils, stopping the mass of bodies.

Rocky breathed shakily. "I'm so sick of this. I'm sick of being a part of all these terrible games. I don't want it anymore." His mouth opened wide and revealed the two glowing red eyes of the Tapewyrm.

"I'm done."

The head of the Tapewyrm squirmed over Rocky's tongue, hesitated under his teeth, and inched into the air. It took a breath through its slitted nostrils, looked back at Rocky, and smiled wickedly. In one violent motion Rocky's body split into bits and was swallowed by the massive throat of the true Tapewyrm, newly released from its bonds. The head slithered into its body's mouth and peered through the dripping black fangs at the Butcher. The two monsters took a moment to study each other, dominated by stunned silence, and then pounced on each other with deafening roars.

Richard stood dumbfounded under the carnage. Oni dashed in and pulled him away before they were trampled.

"Rich! What happened?"

His sword trembled in a tightened fist. "You moron Rock," he said through grit teeth. "We were your friends." It was the truth, and yet somehow the statement rung hollow in Richard's ear. Oni grimaced and lowered his head.

"Come on," he eventually said. "Rock's Noise is holding Butch still. Let's not let their erasure have been in vain." Richard nodded slowly, and raised his sword. It seemed to become harder to lift as the night went on.

Neku observed this from afar, not of his own volition but because his legs couldn't actually support him without tremors of bone-searing pain. While the Noise wrestled against the Butcher's massive frame Amy and the Reapers beat at it with all they had. And yet somehow it still did not falter; for every body cut out of it, for every fireball that seered its flesh, for every monstrous bite the Tapewyrm ripped off and swallowed greedily, the Butcher came back twice as ferocious. Worse than that, its mass never subsided. Bodies replaced bodies, and skeletons attacked as powerfully as fully-fleshed corpses.

_And all that was inside one guy,_ Neku thought, bemused. Then it occured to him: this was still that one Reaper. At the core of the monster must be that single soul controlling it in some fashion, or at least holding it all together. If they could kill that core Butch, the Butcher would die too. Probably. Hopefully. Neku really had no idea, but was putting all his cards in the theory. Of course, it would all be for naught if he couldn't stand on his own two feet and fight. The single healing Pin just wasn't doing enough. He tried to push himself up again, got as far as his knees, and buckled under his diminutive weight, landing with a crunch.

A crunch? _What's in my pocket that would crunch?_ His hand dug under him and touched a soft material. Joshua's bag. For emergencies only. _Wow, I am an IDIOT for forgetting about this!_ Desperately hoping it was a holy rocket launcher or a portal to a different dimension, Neku pulled the string and was overwhelmed by the ensuing force that escaped the bag. He might have fallen over if he wasn't already on the ground.

What was in the bag, and was now soaring out of it like a trail of birds lifting off a tree, were dozens... no, hundreds of Pins. Pins of all colors, with different designs and styles. Neku recognized a few of them: Sparkle Charge, Zantetsu, was that Macrocosmic Pull?! Pin after Pin poured out of the bag in a massive deluge, each one gravitating toward Neku and setting themselves in a static orbit. Some of them clicked and chirped to each other in a metallic language, glowing and shaking slightly. The pain in Neku's body evaporated, and he recognized Handsfree Healing orchestrating the dozens of other healing Pins. They practically lifted Neku on his feet and settled into their place before him. This, Neku realized with awe, was every single Pin from the Shibuya Reaper Game. Their were even the Tin Pins, and the Gatito sets!

Joshua could have given Neku a nuclear warhead and he wouldn't be able to do as much damage as these Pins allowed. Heck, the right combination would likely be equivolent to a full air raid! And the Butcher took notice the instant that Neku opened the bag

Still restrained by the Tapewyrm, a spike of bones shot out of its side aimed for Neku's head. Almost instinctually Neku, and his entourage of Pins, teleported to the side. Eyes darting to every side, Neku sought out a few choice Pins and tapped them in rapid succession. A few slid under his fingers, others buzzed against the air, and others followed Neku's fingertips drawing lines in the ground. Each one glowed with an intense heat, and it was like a fire giant's sword sliced across the spine in the blink of an eye. Fireballs peppered the air, the bodies on the earth burst into flame, a flowing of fire torched the collection of bones until they caught and broke into embers. The remains quickly retracted into the Butcher's body, but the damage had already been done. Neku admired his Pins with a grin he felt he hadn't gotten to wear in a very long time.

"Oh man," he said, a light burning in his eyes. He pressed one hand to his headphones. "I love this song."

Neku raised the gun Bernadotte had given him in his other hand and aimed it at the Butcher. The revolver had been out of ammo for hours. A line of Pins reordered themselves in front of the barrel, clicking against each other with excitement. He pulled the trigger, and an avalanche of automatic fire chewed into the Butcher. Bullets exploded inside it, zigzagged through its innards, and shook its fleshy carapace.

The Butcher showed no pain, but it also stopped thrashing for a moment. Everyone else kept beating into it, but it barely registered them. It looked confused, like it didn't understand that Neku had just hit it the way he did. Drool started pouring from its maw again.

"Hey ugly!" Amy slammed her yoyo into the beast's head. "Don't you ignore me just because Phones got a power up! Fucking fight me!"

*Aaaaaaaah* A puff of haze creeped around the Butcher's body and over the Tapewyrm. Amy wasn't interested in seeing whatever it was about to do; she slashed into the body again, and again, spraying browned pus and blood. Neku twitched his hands and chains shot into the mist. The cloud became soupy and blocked their vision of the beasts. Flashes of black Noise flesh would surface occasionally, but that was it. After a while Amy stopped striking flesh with her swings, and she inched forward to peer into the fog.

"Don't," Oni said. "We'll be more blind than him in there. Back off." They did as he said, retreating without lookng away from the creeping mist. Discontent brewed in Amy's chest.

A minute passed. "Come on!" she shouted. "I'm right here! Fight me already!" Another minute. There was no visible sign of movement within the fog: a pop of bubbling flesh, quiet crunching, the creak of straining sinew, only brief sounds hinted at any life on the inside. Neku held his chains taught, but they didn't resist his grip.

"Okay," Neku eventually grunted and released the chain Pins. "I'm getting tired of this." Suddenly the air between the mist separated into perfect disks and the light appeared to distort and drain away like a whirlpool, slowly sucking away the fog.

Then a black tendril swung out of the cloud and struck Amy and Neku across the parking lot. Butch flung the rest of the Tapewyrm after them and stabbed his cleaver into the ground again. His body had separated from the Butcher beast, connected by an umbilical cord of viscera and bone marrow. His finger went tap tap, and the beast's throat rumbled hungrily.

Amy regained her balance and braced her wheels against the backs of dead bodies. In a feat of strength and frustration she pushed the thrashing Tapewyrm out of her way and charged toward Butch. Neku recovered from the blow and yelled after her.

"Amy! Don't lose your head, you're going to get killed!"

"Shut up!" She swung down on Butch's shaggy head, but he was gone before it hit the ground. Amy caught a blurred movement in the corner of her eye and tied a cat's cradle through her fingers, charged a flash of energy through the line, and impeded Butch's vertical slice. The force pushed her away on her wheels, which a large reason why the hulking cleaver hadn't cut through the string, energy or not. The beast pounced into Amy's path and raised its paw to squish her, but right as it began to bring it down the Tapewyrm bit into its face and the two wrestled away.

Richard instead grabbed her elbow and stopped Amy's uncontrolled momentum. "He's too fast for you. Focus on the monster."

"Shut up," she said with a scowl and pulled her arm away. "I had him fine earlier."

"Yeah, when he was full of that," he said, pointing to the flesh beast tearing at the quickly multiplying tentacles of the Tapewyrm. "That was slowing him down before. Now he's empty." A bundle of icicles jutted out of the ground beside the two, catching Butch midstride before boulders tumbled on his head. They leapt away and Neku teleported next to Amy.

"Hey guys, remember the fight? Quit it with the fucking conversation, we REALLY do not have the time to get ourselves killed." He turned to Amy. "You want to get emotional? Fine, go nuts, I don't care. But if you get yourself killed that's not going to help anybody, especially not Brad." He spun a row of Pins and blasted Butch with a double barrage of fire and lightning. "So get it together and get some good old-fashioned revenge."

Amy pushed past Neku and jabbed Butch's reeling body with her yoyo. "You don't have to tell me twice." But she did understand that Butch was faster than her, which meant he was now faster than all of them except Neku. Richard couldn't keep pace with his swings anymore, Oni wouldn't be able to hold his distance. That wasn't her problem though; Amy simply dug her heels into the ground, spun out her yoyo, and began lapping the area until she picked up enough speed to make her eyes water and her hair nearly fly out of her head. Richard was put on the defensive, narrowly blocking attacks or getting nicked by the corner of the cleaver. They noticed that Butch was wielding it with both his hands now, restricting his range of movement. Amy supposed without all that extra muscle in his body he had become weaker, and that was just fine by her. Neku switched between close and long range assault at a rapid pace, teleporting in and out of Butch and the Butcher's range and rinsing them both. Flames erupted out of the sky, orbs of water pinballed around the clearing, lighting exploded from his fingers, whirlwinds flung exploding debris, chains created a web that the combatants danced through, meteors rained on the Butcher's back and blew craters around Butch's dashing feet. His Pins flew through the air, busy as bees that could travel at sonic speeds. Four Pins circled Butch and fired successive shotgun blasts into his head and torso, then flew away when he swung at them. The Tapewyrm and the Butcher tumbled between the humanoid fighters in a raging brawl, each taking collateral damage from Neku and Oni's shots.

As they rolled through the fight, the cord connecting Butch and the Butcher brushed over Oni's hair. Instinctively he shot at it, only for it to curl around his explosive and glide away silently. Dumbfounded for a second, Oni came to a realization and nearly jumped.

"Hey rollergirl!" he called to Amy and pointed at the umbilical cord. "Tie that up!" Amy ducked under the flesh rope, simultaneously throwing her yoyo over it, and caught the ball, catching the cord with her string. Suddenly Butch and the Butcher were at both her sides, teeth bared and veins strained from exertion. Air burst under Amy and sent her soaring above them, dragging the cord with her. The Butcher sent out a volley of body spires in pursuit right as the Tapewyrm ensnared it again, and Oni and Neku blew them away. Richard flew between Butch and Amy and clashed swords with him.

Amy landed on the umbilibal cord, crossed her hands, and pulled with all her might. Every mouth on the Butcher's body squealed as Amy strangled its lifeline and it panicked in its binds. Butch planted his foot in Richard's chest and made a crater in the asphalt with his body. As he descended on Amy Neku teleported in and landed a headbutt. Butch's mouth split open, revealing his sick rows of bloody teeth, and right as he lunged for Neku's throat a small black hole opened between his jaws and concaved his skull. And then, with one final flare of strength, Amy split the umbilical cord in twain.

Its connection to Butch broken, the monster of cannibalized bodies became still and limp in the Tapewyrm's tangling grip, which the Noise proceeded to eat with gusto. Butch pulled his face out of the spacial sinkhole, but Neku was gone long before he had the opportunity to swing. A series of fireballs exploded in Butch's back, then a car dropped on his head and they plummeted to the earth.

The transformation Amy witnessed in the monster they had been fighting was nothing short of incredible. When Butch pushed the car off of himself Richard met him immediately and put a deep gash through his armpit. No skeletal hands came out to mend his flesh, no pus or animate veins to fill the wound. The cut was just a cut, and it seriously impeded his attack speed. Now with the speed advantage Richard put Butch on the retreat. Neku and Oni were at his back though, acting as a two-man firing squad and blowing chunks out of his spine and shoulders. A bullet blew out his knee and made Butch kneel, and Richard deftly chopped the rest of the way through his underarm and separated it from his shoulder.

Butch never made a sound. He tried to swing the cleaver with his other arm, but Richard disarmed him effortlessly. Oni and Neku put there arms down, panting in the heat they'd inadvertantly created.

_No._

Richard put his blade up to Butch's throat. His blind eyes betrayed no emotion.

_No!_

"Good night, my friend." Richard raised the sword for the death blow.

"NO!" The yoyo wire appeared suddenly and dragged Butch away by the neck. Amy slammed him against a brick wall.

"No no no, this is all wrong! That was nothing! What kind of fucking fight was that?! Look at me, I barely have a scratch on me!" Butch faced her, expressionless and cold. Amy's grip on her yoyo shook tightly.

The others' looked at the scene in shock. "Kid, what the hell are you doing?"

"SHUT UP!" Amy screamed, still looking at the stoney faced cannibal. "I want a real fight! I want my big climax! This hairy shit spent all his time fighting you, or Rock's snake, or looking at Neku and his overpowered anime shit like he was a giant pair of tits! What about me? I want my fight! I WANT BRAD BACK YOU SON OF A BITCH! GIVE HIM BACK TO ME!" She punched him with her yoyo. "Give him back!" And she punched him again.

"Give him back!" Again. "Give him back!" And again. "GIVE HIM BACK! GIVE HIM BACK GIVE HIM BACK GIVE HIM BACK GIVE HIM BACK GIVE ME MY BRAD BACK!" And again and again, until Butch's face was little more than a bloody pulp. Yet still he looked at her with his milky eyes, utterly blind to her rage and despair.

"Give him back..." She panted, her hand heavy with a mix of his and her blood. "I need him back. You don't understand, I NEED him. And you took him away..."

Neku reached out to Amy. Before he could touch her she threw out her yoyo and circled Butch's neck, and with a grip on both sides she severed his head from his shoulders. His body thudded against the pile of other bodies, melting away into the river of carnage left behind.

Amy turned to Neku and the Reapers. Tears brimmed in her eyes.

"There. He's dead. We won. Yay."

By now the entire Nazi zeppelin was burning down. It's gas reserves had already combusted, blowing holes in the infrastructure and causing the ship to collapse. Seras tore through the burning supports like paper in search of Integra. It wasn't terribly hard to imagine where she might be: she'd been directed by a werewolf not too long beforehand. Along the way she had found a handy anti-aircraft turret, easily made into a rifle by simply removing it from the setting.

The path was simple enough to follow. The fires licked ineffectually at Seras' sides. A heavy gun felt comforting in her hands. The end was so close at hand. And yet...

What was the growing stillness in the back of Seras' brain?

_Master?_

She stopped. The silence persisted in that region of her mind. Seras had not even realized there was a noise there before, but suddenly like the absense of white noise waking a child it jolted her awareness and made her nervous. Instinctually she knew what it had been, and what its stilling suggested.

"Mas-" The floor fell out from under her. Deftly Seras caught herself, but her handhold was burning away as quickly as the surface she had been standing on.

"There's no time," Bernadotte cautioned.

"Tsk!" Seras grit her teeth and pushed forward. The silence in her brain completed itself, and she knew it was over.

Alucard was gone.

But Integra's scent had suddenly caught Seras' nose. The source was directly ahead, clear as anything could be in such an infernal hurricane. Something behind her exploded, at this point it was impossible to keep track of what or where, and she took advantage of the backdraft and rode it through the ceiling.

Seras had overestimated how close the explosion would land her next to Integra, and she panicked for the briefest second that she had blown up. Of course, Integra was immune to collateral damage. That was something Seras would have to get used to.

But those thoughts were instantly swept away once Seras saw _him_ , sitting in his bloody chair with a greasy smile malforming his fat cheeks, dressed in all white with hair slicked to the side like a Sunday School prig. It was the fucking Major.

"So," he said, the word churning out of his mouth like butter. "It will be you two that will kill me..."

The women looked upon him with such utter hate and spite that if they had answered with words acid might have spat out.

The Major's glowing gaze landed on Seras. It was an utterly unremarkable countenance that bore the eyes of Napoleon and Alexander the Great; the eyes of furious ambition. Those very same eyes had seen forward to this invasion decades ago, had overseen every detail, inspected every soldier, perfected every last minute expense and gain. Seras found them disgusting.

"Well, pleased to meet you, Fräulein. I am merely stating the obvious," he said, excusing himself as if he had committed a haughty social faux pas. "Yes, it will be you two. It will not be Alucard that defeats me. It will be me that defeats Alucard." He paused briefly to stand, offering the ladies the chance to speak up. They did not entertain the notion.

"My archenemy is Alucard and you right now, your archenemy is me!" The Major spread his arms wide in welcome to his beautiful, wrathful demise. "Now, bring it on! Here is your enemy! He is right here! You are over there and I am here!" His smiling face twitched in a momentary fit of time-worn insanity. "Here I am."

"Seras," Integra spoke levelly. "Shoot him." And then she began to scream. "Shoot him! SHOOT HIM!" The muscle memory took over Integra's body, and her arm lifted on its own and pointed judiciously at the pudgy Major. "Search and destroy! Search and destroy!"

Seras was happy to oblige, and found herself yelling with Integra as she lifted her cannon and opened fire on the protective barrier between them and him. Dents and divots spiderwebbed out, but the rounds could not penetrate.

The Major frowned disappointedly. "Doc made it too strong."

Seras tossed away the ineffective gun. It was a temporary setback: she had seen a suitable replacement on the way there. She drove her Familiar arm into the ground, and a few large Familiar tendrils for good measure, and fished around until they wrapped around her target.

The Major watched with sadomasochistic glee as Seras tore one of the Nazi zeppelin's 88 millimeter cannons through the floor and steadied it on her shoulder aiming at him. "The acht-acht!" He squeed in joyous recognition. "That's fantastic! I love it!"

_Fuck you for enjoying this you sick freak._

"I agree," Bernadotte chimed. "Blast this monstrous maggot back to the hole he crawled out of."

Seras manipulated the pistons of the canon to click together and fire a single round into the barrier, through it, and blasting through the Major's body. Far away the slug dislodged a church bell and deflected into the morning sky. The empty discarded case clanged onto the ground. Seras slumped the canon off of her shoulder and followed Integra, who was already striding through the falling scraps of reinforced glass.

"It's over Major!" Integra pronounced into the smoking remains of his body.

Shockingly, the Major responded. "So... it would seem. But hey... not just yet."

Integra looked down at him with a surprised expression. "Is that... Is that what you are, Major?!"

The smoke cleared, and what Seras had thought were internal organs worming out of the Major's blasted body was steel piping and glass gauges. Blood and oil mixed in a pool around him.

"That's right," he said. "This is me."

Seras looked at it wide-eyed. "He's a machine."

"Good gracious," the Major breathed raspily. "Didn't your mother ever teach you... that it's rude to stare? Machinery aside, I am just as human now as I ever was, fräulein."

Integra's eyes narrowed and glazed over with malice. "Look at you, Major. A clockwork monstrosity."

The Major's bold smile did not waver in the face of this challenge. "Deny it all you want. My humanity is not in question. I still have that one trait that puts us in ascendance even above the angels.

"It is my will that drives me. The vampires that you were so happy to keep in your employ... without the lifeblood of others to keep them going, they would shamble to a halt. If it's a monster you want, look no further than Alucard, and this little one, playing at immortality. Don't mention me in the same breath as that fraud. The moment I am propelled by my own unadulterated will, I become heir to something Alucard can only steal. Even if I were reduced to nothing more than a brain in a jar, synapses firing in a sea of pure thought... I am human just like you are. Within me rests a human soul... and a human's will, precious beyond all worth.

"He smiles at you in the form of a young girl, or pulls at your heartstrings in the form of a weary veteran. So many faces a monster has, and all of them stolen, all of them lies." The Major rose, barely a few inches but more than either Integra or Seras thought possible. "I despise him. Every cell in my body called for his annihilation. So I destroyed his kingdom and cast him down into the dust. Fitting that it took a man with the trappings of a monster to slay a monster with the trappings of a man. He was a casualty to my will. 'My enemy is not human. My enemy is less than a human.' Since the earliest dawning of mankind, this is the battlecry... it just happened to be more literal in my cry. That battlecry... those thoughts are running through your mind right now, aren't they?" Integra showed no reaction to his accusation.

"I planted the seeds of this war half a century ago..." he concluded with pride, holding out his hand expectantly. "Now, show me what has blossomed."

Integra pointed her hand, looking as though she were poised to sick Seras on the crippled tin man, but stopped. She considered the thing below her, and after a moment's thought pulled her hand back and threw off her jacket. Then, in very deliberately measured steps, approached the Major with a gun in her hand. He smiled, satisfied, and removed the firearm from his own holster to fire at Integra with a kind of inaccuracy one could not believe was unintentional. She stopped walking mere feet away from the Major, and he stopped shooting.

In the breath of a moment, both parties fired on the other. Integra's eye splattered out the side of her head, but she remained standing. A hole oozed blood from the center of the Major's forehead. He fell back, eye's white with giddiness.

"Ah, excellent... This was exactly... what I hoped my war would be." And thus the grand leader of the Millenium organization expired, much too long after his due day.

Integra looked down on his body. "Die," she muttered to his unhearing ear. "You must die. Was it a good war, Major?" She pulled on last secreted cigar out of her pocket and lit it between her teeth. "This is not even a war. After being nearly dead for sixty years you have just expired. You must die. It is absolute retribution. Whatever you may profess humankind to be, you are no longer the least bit human. You are simply a genuine monster."

The flames engulfing the ship quickly approached the two women.

"And at any time, it is only a human that can defeat a monster. Monsters are defeated by humans. That is because only humans have defeating as their goal. Not for the joys of fighting. Because it is our duty to carry out. You are not human. That is why he is coming back." She took a long drag on her cigar, bolstered with undeniable certainty.

The fire quickly circled them, but neither Seras nor Integra felt them. It was as though the devouring force of nature was showing deference to their plight, if only for the moment. Out of nowhere Integra shouted Walter's name into the immolating bowels of the ship, then shrunk away.

"Walter has just passed on," she said, refusing to be overcome with sadness.

Seras bowed her head. Not for a second did she question Integra's knowledge on the matter. "Right." She hoped the traitor rested peacefully.

The roof above them began to collapse. Seras darted to Integra's side protectively, shrouding them both in her Familiar tendrils.

"Let's go back," Integra said. "Let's go back Seras. Back to our home. Fly!"

And so Seras flew. With Integra on her back and the flaming wreckage falling around them, and then behind them, Seras flew away from the battlefield. Away from the Hellsing War.

It could have been a beautiful summer's day. The sun was warm, the breeze was cool, the clouds were fluffy and white. Of course all that really accomplished was making the decaying bodies stink that much worse and carrying it across the city. Terrified civilians peeked out of manholes and subway exits, coughing and vomitting at the stench, to see if the battle had truly ended and if they one. It was unclear if there even was a victor.

Neku sat glumly on the hood of a car, fingering his Player Pin and the bag that his Pin arsenal had returned to after the conclusion of the fight with Butch. It jingled lightly as a bag filled with metal should with no hint whatsoever of the power within. _Freaking Joshua. Couldn't even tell me what was inside before running off. Again._ Neku sighed, overcome with the sheer predictability of it.

Oni and Richard were struggling to keep the Tapewyrm in line after it finished eating all the bodies Butch had left. Unlike regular Noise that could be controlled by Reapers, this one that Rocky had released was effectively a half-trained dog.

Amy sat in the spot where she killed Butch and hadn't moved since. No one was bold enough to tell her to stand up. No one could even think of something to say.

"I said cut it out!" Oni pulled the Tapewyrm down and punched it in the nose. It hissed and tried to shake him off, and he punched it again. "Listen to me you damn Noise!" *hissss*

Richard sighed. "It's no use Malcolm, that thing is so stubborn it won't listen to anybody."

"Urg, yeah," Oni said, wrestling against the Noise's head. "Except Rock apparently. Hell of a - hrgh - Tamed Noise to pick!"

He turned away from Oni and the Noise, shoulders sagged, and approached Neku.

"Nice save with the Pins," Richard said. "You could have brought it out earlier."

"Didn't know I had it. Joshua just gave me the bag and left, didn't mention what it was or anything."

Richard laughed humorlessly. "Sounds about right for a Composer."

"Yeah. Always doing their own thing."

"Playing their own games."

Neku grunted. "Speaking of Composers..." He pocketed the bag and hid his Player Pin. "Seras is outside of the city. Real big property, 'Hellsing Manor.' I think it's a government facility or something, I don't know. But that's where she is."

"Uh." Richard froze. Had he heard that right? It was so sudden and completely out of nowhere. "What?"

"I told you I'd tell you where she was once I was sure you were on her side. Well, you just saved my ass and your friend over there has kind of already been to see her. So fuck it, I think you're good. And to hell with whatever Joshua says."

There was silence for a bit. Richard looked at Neku as if he might take it all back. Laugh and say "psyche" or whatever the kids of this century said. But he didn't, Neku just looked back at him awkwardly.

Eventually Richard nodded. "Okay." Then Neku stood up, glanced at Amy for a moment, and walked away. It was about time he found Joshua and got back to the whole Seras problem.

A few feet away, the Tapewyrm had suddenly stopped fighting Oni's hand. It was now deathly still. Red eyes peered out between its teeth, staring straight at Richard.

"Ahhhhh." Annabelle stretched her freshly regrown muscles. Spasms of relief shook her skinny body as it recognized the healthy synapses and sinew. She rubbed her skinned-over stub, feeling the the tip of her bone slice into her index. It wasn't perfect, but it would be enough to stake a vampire. The only other unfortunate omission from her recovery was Annabelle's long head of hair, which couldn't grow back in the tub since it was dead tissue. Any hair she might have retained after the fight would have come off anyway. It was a small price to pay really.

Her Noise presented a few pieces of clothing to replace her lost dress. A three-piece suit, a few dresses, not the nicest things in her wardrobe but they'd work to put forward a good impression at the end of the battle against darkness. She chose a classy sequence blue dress with silver seamwork and silver flats, and tucked the winged pendant between her cleavage. There was a wig in the Noise's collection, but Annabelle turned it away. No part of her would be fake today.

The hours had passed slowly in the bath, but Annabelle was still struck by the light of the morning sun. No smoke dimmed the silky blue sky. The wreckage of London below her even had a certain dignity to it, like the ruins of a great empire. Survivors wandered the streets wearily and searched the rubble for belongings and loved ones. Annabelle's empire, beaten but not broken. Pride swelled in her bossom. Her people would carry on and her kingdom could be rebuilt. Now where were her Reapers?

She took off in search, the Noise trailing behind her. While making herself visible to the OG had its appeals, Annabelle chose not to show off too much. Reapers were supposed to be a secret after all. Let the survivors tell stories of her, spread rumors and craft theories. Make her into a modern legend. Yes, that would suffice. For now.

Annabelle spotted something below her: a great black serpent slithering down the street and three figures leading it. _What in the world?_ Annabelle thought. _Is that... Oh no._

The Tapewyrm noticed her descent before the others, rearing its head to watch her. Richard and Oni followed its gaze up to her. Their expressions turned to shock, and the two alternated between her hand and her head. The third figure, a girl Annabelle did not immediately recognize, barely glanced at her.

Annabelle touched down. "Malcolm, Richard, I'm glad to see you're alright."

"Yeah..." Oni hesitated. "Better than you apparently. What the hell happened?"

"Kiryu." Her Noise approached the Tapewyrm. The two locked eyes and stared at each other. Annabelle approached it and touched the slimy skin of Rocky's unmistakable Noise.

"Rocky..." Annabelle breathed. "What did this?"

Richard and Oni drooped. "You're not going to believe it, but... Butch. We found him fighting Players and... eating them. He was a monster, I don't know what happened but... Anny, he ate Megan." Annabelle half-turned her head. Her hand tightened into a fist.

"Rocky," Richard continued. "He completely snapped. He let the Tapewyrm consume him, then it fought Butch. Even that wasn't enough. The Living Player had to use hundreds of Pins at the same time to-"

"It ate my friend." The girl, seemingly only now taking notice of Annabelle, had turned to them. There was a yoyo in her hand.

Annabelle regarded the girl. "I recognize you. You're that American Player. Amelia, was it?"

Amy's purple eyes shook in their sockets, but they never strayed from Annabelle's curious gaze. "Yeah. Amelia."

"Well Amelia, I am sorry for the loss of your friend."

"Brad."

"Bradford Coglitch. Believe me dear, I know the name of every Player in my Game."

"Your Game? You mean... you're the boss? The big bad behind the Reapers? You made this whole thing. You set those monsters on us?"

"No. No no, let's get one thing straight. I do not deal in vampires, and Butch is no associate of mine. He left us many years ago, and I do not mourn his death any more than I would mourn the death of a rabid dog. But yes, the Reaper's serve me. And you, my dear Amelia, are the first person to ever win my Game. I would congratulate you, but I can't imagine you much care."

"... I want him back."

Annabelle smiled and nodded. "I might be able to arrange that."

Amy's eyes burst open. "What?"

"Stay with Malcolm," Annabelle instructed her with a chuckle. "He'll lead you to our headquarters. Once I return you and I can have a nice long conversation about the prize for winning the Reaper Game. I think you'll like what I have to offer." Oni and Richard stared aghast at their Composer. Oni shook his head in confusion. Annabelle waved him forward and repeated the order. He shook his head again, shrugged, and led the shocked Amy away.

Richard made to follow them, but Annabelle put a hand on his chest. "Not you."

"Composer King?" She stepped in front of him, any warmth or pride completely wiped from her countenance.

"You said Living Player." His lips tightened. "You fought with the Living Player?"

The Tapewyrm growled lightly behind them. "Yes, Composer King. He was indespensable in the fight against Butch."

"Mmm." Annabelle made a show of considering this. "Where did he go?"

Richard's eyes focused on hers. "I don't know."

Roaring shocked his back. The Tapewyrm arched its head and spat at them in a rage. Richard was completely bemused by it. Annabelle laughed.

"You know," she said, touching the furious Noise. "This Tapewyrm was specifically designed as a parasite. It can't survive without a soul to leech off of. If it had consumed Rocky completely, it would have died." Richard's eyes narrowed at the Composer. Understanding struck him like a ton of bricks.

"Rocky?..."

"More or less. He may be mostly gone, little more than a consciousness now, but its enough to feed the Noise. Feed it with emotions and cognitive thoughts, even desires. And I'll bet that Rocky had a real grudge against Victoria after she killed Bobby." The Tapewyrm let out another roar. "See?" Annabelle smiled pointedly.

"Now, please Richard, tell me where the Living Player went. And maybe I'll forgive you of your disloyalty just this once, since you've been such a reliable Reaper to me for all these years."

And here Richard was torn. He chewed his lip and thought long and hard about what careful words he should choose. The Tapewyrm... Rocky's eyes were on him. Annabelle waited patiently for his reply, the fires of her Noise burning her silhouette.

He sighed and relinquished his fate. "I don't know."

Annabelle nodded wordlessly and turned to the two Noise behind her. "Rock, please tell Jacky where he went. Jacky, you know what to do."

"Jacky?" Richard asked, but was cut off by Annabelle's open hand smashing his face into the concrete. Rocky leaned into Jacky's ear, and his inner mouth whispered something to her. She stretched out a flaming tendril and dug it into Richard's back. He let out an ear-piercing scream as the fire carved lines through his flesh. The flames cast a terrible red glow over them.

"Not too fast now Jacky dear," Annabelle commanded through her teeth. "I want this traitor to understand the depth of his betrayal." So Jacky carved with agonizingly slow and precise movements. Up and down his back, searing through flesh. The fat sizzled and bubbled under Richard's skin, and when the flame reached his spine the burning spread into his brain. All the while he screamed, but no living soul could hear him and all the rest were too few and far away.

After several minutes Jacky stopped. Scarred into Richard's back were three words.

"Hellsing Manor."

"Seras."

Annabelle released her grip on Richard and studied the Noise's message. Richard gasped for air between sobs of pain. The scent of his charred flesh was overwhelming, but Annabelle made no sign that she noticed.

"Thank you Jacky. Thank you Rocky. Please take this trash back to HQ and lock him up somewhere dark. Keep him out of sight though. I would hate to scare away my first winning Player before I could even recruit her." The Tapewyrm picked him up between its teeth and slithered away.

Richard looked through slit eyes at Annabelle. "You're insane," he muttered. Annabelle ignored him and prepared to fly out of the city to this manor.

"Come on Jacky. Let's not demean ourselves with his ilk."

"That Noise is not Jaqueline, Annabelle!" Richard shouted, his voice full of ire. "It's just the mindless remains of her soul!"

Annabelle looked at him with utter disdain. Jacky grimaced and spun her finger next to her temple. The two girls laughed and flew away side by side.

Seras very nearly crashed into the manor lawn with both Integra and the sun weighing down her flight. Craters and crevices had all but erased the lush grass, now replaced with blood and metal. Hellsing Manor itself was a tinder light away from crumbling to the ground. Putting out the fire must have taken a Herculean effort on the two surviving Wild Geese's part.

Integra Hellsing, descendant of Abraham Van Hellsing, master of the dread vampire lord Count Dracula, member of the Queen's Round Table, looked over the decrepit husk which was her ancestral home with her single remaining eye. Destroyed in a single night by a small army of half-century old Nazis looking for one last suicide mission. It was nothing less than history's greatest Pyrrhic victory. Madaam Integra stepped through her birthplace's shattered doorway, leaving Seras behind, and said:

"Sleep, Seras. Surely one of us will be able to."

Seras did not feel particularly sleepy. Exhausted, both physically and emotionally, but wide-eye awake. She toed the soil, unsure if it was brown from morning dew or dried blood. Insects that might have cleaned the dead men's wounds lie dead in the dirt. Scavengers made wide berths around the property, smelling poisoned meat. Even the crows shirked their ancient duty and refused to cry above the slain. Seras took a seat on the stone steps of the manor and fell sideways into the empty space a mine had blown open. With a sigh she accepted her horizantal state and stretched into a crater. Her Familiar arm spread out roots beside her, where Bernadotte splayed himself with a cigarette in hand.

"Hell of a night, oui?"

Seras looked at the blood ghost smoking next to her, half annoyed and half pleased with his presence. She turned on her side and lay her head on his non-flesh shoulder. He wrapped the rest of his arm around her in a gentle squeeze.

"You should listen to the lady and go to bed. Vampires don't sleep in broad daylight." She gave no response, staring emptily into the folds of his illusory coat. Pip removed the cigarette from his lips. "At least get something in your belly, mon cher. You haven't eaten anything all night. Well, except me!" Seras punched him in the chest, but Pip laughed and smiled stupidly all the same. The corner of Seras' mouth twitched upward imperceptibly, but he could feel her do it.

"That's not funny, you arse! You died!"

"Oui, and I've never felt better." He chuckled and rubbed his cigarette in the dirt. It disappeared moments after being let go of. "I do not often get the opportunity to be inside a beautiful woman all night while also fighting a werewolf! Although there was this very uncomfortable situation with a spanish woman and her very hairy father..." Seras punched him again, laughing a little this time.

"I have all your memories now idiot, I know when you're making this shit up."

"Heheh, yes," Pip chuckled, sitting up slightly. "I have no secrets from you. Just as you have none from me. And I can tell that you are very tired, very hungry, and very worried for those Reaper camarades and the Japanese boys." Seras' heart sank a bit, and she looked out toward the city.

Bernadotte stroked her head affectionately. "Well, we can do something about one of those things right now, and it will help with the others. Viens, some blood bags probably survived in the basement."

"Alright." The two stood up together and made their way into the Manor. "Wait, do I know French now?"

An entire cooler of blood bags had survived, in fact, and Seras drank two and was halfway through the third by the time she was walking past the window in front of her bedroom door. The vision of white almost completely missed her peripheral vision, and if that had been the case Seras would have gone to sleep in peace, and perhaps never woken up. But she did see it, and when she looked directly at the figure of Annabelle King treading down her lawn it sent a cascade of emotions down her throat and spine.

Annabelle examined the burnt husk of a mansion with mild curiousity. She saw the woman vaulting out of a window with even more curiousity. Recognition did not strike until Seras called out to her.

 "I'll be honest Anny, this is a terrible time. But if you want to do this now, I will happily remove your heart from your chest."


	17. The Lost Composer of London

A cold wind spread ashes over the London countryside. Sirens echoed in the distance, helicopters hovered over the skyline. Emergency rescue teams from neighboring cities were pouring in to attend to the survivors before their homes crumbled on top of them. It was all ever so far away, yet always visible from Hellsing Manor. Seras and Annabelle were too absorbed with each other to pay them any mind.

A tense silence followed Seras' initial challenge as the women sized each other up. It was no concern of Seras' what had become of Annabelle's hand, just as it wasn't Annabelle's what had become to Seras' arm. The purpose of each was apparent to them both. Seras let out a single humorless laugh and ran a hand through her hair. Annabelle smirked patronizingly and puffed out her chest.

Another moment. Then Annabelle snapped her fingers, and a monsterous flame lifted its head behind her.

"Burn in Hell, Seras."

The fire Noise shot forward so quickly it sounded like it was coming from a high-pressure hose. Everything burned in its path, both the ground and the air around it. Eyes widening, Seras disappeared behind the wall of fire. The conflagration devoured everything up to the manor itself, dead bodies and abandoned weapons.

A crack and pop sounded beneath Annabelle's feet, and out came Seras from the ground with teeth and claws bared. She intended to rip out Annabelle's throat in one swift motion. Annabelle reacted quickly, grabbing Seras' face with one hand to hold back her vampire fangs, and thrust her other arm toward her heart. Seras grabbed the sharpened bone, and the two struggled against each other for several moments, wrestling to eviscerate the other's vitals first. The Noise looped back and roared behind the combatants, opening its maw to swallow Seras whole. A Familiar tendril shot out and dragged Seras out of Annabelle's grip before the Noise reached them.

"Careful, mon cher!" Bernadotte said from behind her brain. "Let this inferno flank us and we're done for!"

The fire regrouped with Annabelle as she stood and scowled in frustration. "What's the matter Seras? I thought hellspawn liked fire!" Annabelle began to float off the ground, stretching her hands and straightening her back so she could look down on Seras. Utter hatred glowed in her sickly green eyes. Wires of flame danced around her form, practically turning Annabelle into a shadow.

"Tsk." Seras wiped some dirt from her chin. "Take a look at yourself Anny."

"Shut up!" An explosion knocked Seras off her feet as the Noise threw a fireball where she had been standing. "You don't get to lecture me, vampire! I played the Game! I followed orders! I did everything that was ever asked of me! I EARNED my status! My power! You couldn't even know what I've had to do to get where I am today!"

Seras grit her teeth and dashed into Annabelle, swinging her fists. "I know exactly what you did! You ripped me away from the only family I had left, you bitch!" Her knuckled audibly cracked against Annabelle's jaw and ribs, but Annabelle wouldn't let her see her flinch. She bore into her just as ferociously, deflecting blows and stabbing with her exposed bones wherever she could land a hit. Meanwhile all around them fire and Familiar energy twisted like a violent tornado, Noise and Bernadotte biting into each other.

"I cannot hold it, Seras!" She growled and retreated again, and Annabelle gave chase with her fire close behind her. The two darted across the field and into the sky, landing blows against each other like peels of thunder.

Inside the manor, Integra lied in bed with a pillow wrapped around her head. The shocks were causing ash to sprinkle onto her from the floor above. "I don't care, I don't care, Seras can handle it, I don't care..."

Seras rolled away from the Noise's burning grasp. She stood back up with a discarded assault rifle and unloaded the clip into Annabelle. She didn't even have the fire burn the bullets away, they simply passed through her ineffectually. Seras threw the gun away and cursed. "Damn Nazi's couldn't even get blessed fucking bullets?!"

"Too be fair mon cher, they were mostly attacking regular humans."

"Yeah I know Pip, let me be mad okay!?" Annabelle swun her fists like hammers into Seras' head, and she winced as the tip of her tongue fell out of her mouth with a spurt of blood. She swung her leg up, and Annabelle barely blocked it with her good arm and skipped away.

"'Pip?' What, you talk to the poor soul you have imprisoned in your fetid veins?"

Bernadotte's face materialized in the tendrils of Seras' arm. "Imprisoned? I signed the lease and paid my rent, putain! And it's leagues above your degoutante body!"

Annabelle smirked. "Oh how cute, you have a blood slave for a boyfriend! I didn't know you were so kinky Seras."

Seras' lips tightened. "Pip, 'oot 'er."

"Oui mon cher!" His face vanished into the smoky blackness and was replaced by the muzzle of a revolver. The gun went off, and the bullet tore a hole through Annabelle's shoulder. Her teeth grit and contained any hint of a grunt, but the wound was easy to see. Her Noise however screamed in fury and blasted forward like a tidal wave. In its anger it allowed its feminine core to come into Seras' view, just for a moment, but long enough for her to remember how it worked. She flew away as fast as her Familiar wings could carry her, the Noise directly behind her.

_ Pip, I have a plan! _

"I had the same one just as you thought of it. Also, I healed your tongue."

_ Merci. _

_ _______________________________________________________________________ _

Meanwhile, miles away in the city, Joshua and Reece were fighting at a pace that made people in the RG shiver if they wandered too close. Joshua flew through portals in rapid succession, appearing and disappearing at every angle, firing lasers and throwing punches at every opportunity. Reece Nayake however stood rooted in a single spot, swiveling on his left foot, going through an arsenal that would make militaries blush. At any moment he could be firing assault rifles, automatic shotguns, handguns of preposterous sizes, explosive ordinances, and a very dangerous slingshot. All designed and customized by the Producer, each one deadly to any resident of the UG. Joshua was riddled with holes that even his Pins could barely keep up with, and Reece took each blast like a rock or ducked under the attack. Both wavered under the other's power, but neither gave the other an inch.

Suddenly, in that noted spot at the back of his brain, Reece felt a nerve twinge. It was not the urgent alarm that he felt earlier that evening, but it was noteworthy.  _ What is Annabelle doing in another fight? _

The momentary pause gave Joshua enough of an opening to dash in and knock him out of his spot. Reece spun around with a double barrel and blew him across the street. He skidded into a portal and popped up behind Reece again, and then shot a laser into his back forcing him to the ground. 

"Heh, I know that look," Joshua said when he saw into Reece's eyes. "Somebody important just took a good hit! I wonder who could do that?" He smiled, licking away a dribble of blood from his chin. Reece pushed himself back up, bleeding but nothing more. Even his clothes were custom, prototype armor. Joshua made a mental note to have Mr. Hanekoma pick up the slack.

Reece didn't answer. He sent Annabelle home, why was she not there? What was she doing outside of London? He closed in on where the sense was originating from. It wasn't far for him. Without a second thought Reece sprouted his wings and took off into the sky.

But Joshua wouldn't let him go so easily. A portal opened and out came the foreign Composer, fist swinging. He popped Reece in the jaw and sent him reeling.

Joshua wiggled his finger. "Tsk tsk, naughty naughty Producer. You're not allowed to interfere with a Composer's inheritance. Cut off their fight and you're breaking the rules." Reece shot Joshua in the eye with a magnum as his retort and took off again. Joshua was fast on his heels.

_______________________________________________________________________

The burning Noise refused to give Seras a millimeter of breathing room. It licked at the heels of her boots nonstop, and she was powerless to halt its pursuit. Annabelle zigzagged around the battlefield, coordinating with her pet and heading her off wherever they went. Each time she stabbed at Seras' heart, and Seras was barely able to evade the attacks. She had gouges oozing blood and flecks of Familiar all over her chest and stomach from Annabelle's strikes. She was closing in for another attack.

In a moment of spontaneous movement Seras leapt as high as her legs would lift her, clearing the top of the charging Noise by a hair's breadth. She could feel the hairs on her neck sizzle away and heat her skin. The fires parted where Annabelle stood staring up at the vampire, smiling giddily at the futility of her acrobatics as giant tendrils of fire arched toward her.

"You can't win this Seras!" she jeered, jumping up with bones poised to impale her heart. "One way or another, I'm going to destroy your black heart!"

"Funny," Seras growled, and with a flap of her Familiar wing she suddenly reversed her momentum and slammed head first into Annabelle. "I thought you'd had enough when you broke it!" The two slammed back to the earth. Seras had her pinned by the arms with a vice grip. "I was a child!"

"So were the rest of us!" Annabelle spat back, lunged her head forward and buried her teeth in Seras' arm. Seras recoiled, weakening her grip and allowing Annabelle to free her damaged arm and stab Seras through the throat. "Don't act like you never participated in the slaughter of countless children, you're no more innocent than me."

Seras tried to make an angry retort, but there was an arm bone in her esophagus so the only noise coming from her was a bloody gurgling. The Noise's flames loomed over their bodies, waiting for Annabelle's word to burn the vampire to cinders. Bernadotte would not give her the chance. His arm suddenly struck out of Seras' shoulder and, borrowing Seras' vampiric strength, chopped through Annabelle's bone in a single stroke. Seras quickly rolled off of her as Annabelle yelped from the pain and shock, and her Noise instinctively dove and made a protective dome around her.

Seras stood haggardly, bending her knees for balance. She took hold of the bone jutting out the side of her neck and ripped it out in one neat pull, spewing blood before Familiar energy plugged the wounds. She noticed that her uniform shirt was on fire, and quickly removed it. Standing in her tank top and a skirt, she would have felt ridiculous under different circumstances.  _ Okay,  _ Seras thought,  _ that's the stake dealt with. Now for the torch. _ She crushed the bones in her hand and waited, preparing for Annabelle's next strike. The dome of fire spun, giving it the appearance of a ball of string or a tunnel-spider's web. A draconic face gazed out of the flames, eyeing Seras like a wild animal but not attacking. Seras remembered enough of her past as a Composer to know that fire could burn anything to nothing in seconds, so making any attempt to penetrate it was futile. She had nothing to do but watch and wait, and never turn her back. 

Then, the ground behind her exploded in a pillar of fire, carrying Annabelle with it. She swung her leg at Seras' head, but she ducked under the attack and countered with a gut punch. Annabelle barely winced, striking Seras with the partially healed, partially cauterized stub of her arm. Striking with it seemed to hurt Annabelle more than it did Seras, but she continued jabbing and hammering with it despite the pain. The two women struggled against each other, caught in a deadlock of bludgeoning and scratching, dodging and countering, it was an untraceable chaotic brawl.

Suddenly, as though thrown from the heavens by God, Joshua and Reece plummeted into the earth less than a hundred meters away from the women. Both were bloodied and beaten by both each other and the sudden impact, but both were on their feet in an instant.

"Annabelle, Seras, stop this imme-" Joshua jumped on Reece's back like a monkey and put him in a choke hold with his legs. The Producer grabbed at the Composer ineffectually to shake him off.

"Doing great Seras, keep it up!" Joshua shouted, throwing a thumbs up and then jabbing it into Reece's eye.

Annabelle and Seras both stopped momentarily at this, but Seras refocused just slightly faster and took the advantage with both hands. She grabbed Annabelle by the head and the shoulder, bared her bloody fangs, and lunged toward her pale neck. The Noise saw this and flashed forward, moving so fast it didn't even give off smoke. The core emerged from its fiery hideaway, an expressionless feminine figure formed of solid fire, reaching out and screeching in what could almost be terror. And as the Noise came, Seras stopped just as her fangs touched Annabelle's skin, and grinned.  _ Gotcha. _

It all happened in the blink of an eye, but Annabelle saw it all more clearly than she had seen anything in forty years: the girl sprinting toward her, holding her hat against her head, screaming for her to "Look out Anny!" The man emerging from Seras' hellish appendage, cloaked in blood and darkness, holding a simple revolver. The evil grin on his face, mirroring his hellspawn master's against her neck.

"Au revoir."

*BANG*

The bullet went straight through Jacky's head, trailing blood and fire. A piercing scream erupted out of Annabelle before she forced herself out of Seras' grasp and ran to catch her falling body. The fires surrounding them dimmed into embers as Annabelle dropped to her knees, holding the burning Noise in her arms. Jacky looked at her, her eyes as big and brown as the day they met. That first day, oh so long ago...

"Jacky?" Annabelle trembled. The girl smiled and reached to touch Annabelle's cheek. Her fingers were cold as ice. And then, she was gone. The fires died, and Annabelle's arms were empty.

"Jacky?" she sputtered again. Tears began to brim in her eyes. "Nooo. No not again. Jacky please, no!" Annabelle clenched her remaining hand, skinny and pale and utterly empty. Tears ran down her cheeks and dripped onto her one hand, and they were cold. Nothing remained of the Noise but smoke evaporating into the blue sky.

A shadow fell over Annabelle's kneeling body. She could see it, past the fog of her tears: the shifting shadow, the wretched arm, she imagined she could even see her eyes in the darkness. Seras Victoria, casting a shadow the size of a giant over the land. 

"Yo-o-o-u..." Annabelle said over her muted sobs. The giant stared down at her from the hills and the towers in the distance. Its hands stretched and they cradled the horizon, claws extended to finish her off. Something beat in Annabelle's chest. 

"You!..." she said again. Another beat, and Annabelle felt it. It spread through her body, slowly at first. It leaked from her wounds, poured from her eyes, drip-dropping on the ground beneath her feet.

"You KILLED her!" She grit her teeth, and her chest beat again. Heat steamed from between her teeth.

"You killed my friend!" The fog in her eyes cleared, only to be replaced with red. The whole world turned red, the sky, the ground, the city beyond. Everything but that black giant standing over her. Its hands closed in on her, she could feel them against her back. Those eyes staring into her like daggers!

"It was just a Noise Annabelle," Seras said, and the giant echoed all around her.

Annabelle felt her heart pounding for the first time in forty years, and it filled her veins with molten ichor.

"SHE WAS MY FRIEND!" Annabelle raised her foot and shook the earth, and stood to meet the giant that dared stand over her. She turned and faced Seras Victoria, screamed in fury and agony, and grabbed her by the throat with her one hand. Seras was caught unaware by the ferocious speed Annabelle attacked her with, and was tossed into the air like a doll.

Annabelle screamed again. She pulled her bag out of her inner breast pocket and took a handful of Pins she had chosen expressly for this fight. They stabbed into her flesh and hooked securely, glowing in response to her power. By then Seras regained her balance, and saw spears of lightning circle Annabelle before hurling themselves at her.

_ Shit, she's got Pins! _ Seras thought, dodging around whizzing streaks of electricity as Annabelle roared and jumped to come after her.

"Whoops," Joshua scratched his head. "Probably shouldn't have given her that tip about carrying more Pins... Oh no you don't!" Joshua brought a laser down on Reece right as he tried to fly into the fight. Reece turned back to the Composer and fired a hail of bullets in the spot he used to be. Joshua reappeared to the side and kicked him in the jaw, but did not retreat fast enough for Reece to grab his ankle and slam him into the ground.

"Stay out of my way!" Reece ordered with several blasts of his shotgun into Joshua's stomach. He spread his wings and darted up into the sky, but before he could even get close his shoulders suddenly exploded with pain and he fell back to the ground, bleeding from to feathery stumps. A portal ascended into the sky before eventually vanishing.

Joshua grinned maliciously. "See, this is exactly why zoos have to clip the eagle's wings! Otherwise they fly off and disturb the other exhibits." Reece's face contorted with frustration, and he pulled a chaingun out of his pocket. "Man, has anyone ever told you that your attack style is kind of like a cartoon character's?" The handheld turret revved up and unloaded pounds of lead, and Joshua scrambled to evade them. He fired another laser and knocked Reece off balance with the heavy weapon, and then came in and drop kicked him to the ground.

"Meep-meep!" Joshua honked mockingly, infuriating Reece further before leaping into another portal as the Producer chucked a grenade at him. He popped back up in the distance and called on a volley of lasers, beating and burning Reece from a distance. Reece reached into his pocket and replaced the chaingun with a scoped rifle, and suddenly a portal opened right beside him. Joshua flew out, yanking the rifle from his hands, and disappeared into another opening. "Thanks boss, just what I was looking for!"

Meanwhile above them, the air exploded with thunder and lightning around Annabelle and Seras, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Annabelle collided gracelessly into Seras, slamming against her with all her force, spitting acid and breathing fire while electricity lit the air and shockwaves battered both of them. There was no planning or aiming of Annabelle's attacks, only sheer chaotic rage and bloodlust.

"YOU TOOK EVERYTHING FROM ME!" she screamed as she wrapped her chain around Seras and beat her with her fist. "MY POSITION, MY REAPERS, MY BEST FRIEND, MY LIFE! YOU NEVER STOP TAKING AND TAKING AND TAKING! WHY WON'T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE?!"

Seras broke the chain and grabbed Annabelle by the head, nearly cracking her skull, and repeatedly punched her in the stomach before throwing her back down to earth. "Me leave you alone?! YOU came after ME! YOU stole my memory! YOU stole my family! YOU came after me again after ten years of nothing! I did NOTHING to you!" Annabelle looked up at her with deranged eyes and deaf ears: she could hardly see Seras through the giant standing over her. When Seras saw that look of mindless anger, it gave her pause. She had expected the hate, the anger, the violence, but not this... insanity. 

Suddenly a shot rang out and Annabelle's side exploded in a shower of blood. Off in the distance lay Joshua with Reece's rifle. "Darn, how do you use this thing?" he muttered, tinkering with the levers on the side and wondering how it cocked. Then as if from nowhere Reece's foot slammed on Joshua's neck with an audible crunch and he brought down an enormous magnum on his temple. 

"I swear Kiryu, I WILL kill you if I have to!" Then at that moment a fireball seared through the air and exploded against Reece's side, throwing him off Joshua. There stood Neku, hand outstretched and with a thousand Pins circling him.

"I wouldn't recommend that," Neku said, and a firing squad of Pins formed a protective barrier between Reece and Joshua. Neku extended his hand to Joshua. "You alright man?"

"Neku!" Joshua said happily and took his hand. "Tag in for me, I have a Composer to enthrone!" And he disappeared into a portal, leaving Neku alone with a complete stranger holding a very large gun. Neku blinked, sighed, adjusted his headphones, and stared down the Producer of London.

Reece leaned back. "You REALLY don't want to fight me kid."

"No," Neku agreed. "But I've fought a lot of stuff I didn't want to. And I'm still more alive than anyone else around here."

Reece let out a heavy sigh and switched the clip on his magnum. "I can't promise you'll make it through the Game a second time, but I'll root for you kid."

"Dude, I'm a three time champion. And I do not intend to go for a fourth round."

Joshua made a beeline into the fight and quickly took stock of the situation. Annabelle and Seras were tearing at each other like wild animals, Pin powers were going off randomly around them as though power was simply flowing through them freely. Annabelle's bullet wound was healing, but very slowly. She was too adrenaline-fueled to notice and properly focus on her healing Pin, which was all the better for Joshua. He flew into their midst, ready to team up with Seras and decimate Annabelle... and was almost immediately flung back out by the sheer ferocity of power being expelled by both. This wasn't a fight anymore, this was a mauling, and Joshua couldn't get in to shift the odds with both women ripping and tearing through anything between each other.

"Hmm..." Joshua stroked his chin thoughtfully as two separate fights exploded in front and behind him. Neku was taking heavy fire and pounding Reece with every element under his control, and Annabelle and Seras were practically a dust cloud. He shrugged, flipped open his phone, and dropped himself and the women down a portal. In the confusion Seras and Annabelle split apart, and Joshua swooped in, pushed Seras out of a portal, and closed every opening.

Seras rubbed her bloody head. "Joshua? What the fuck?" The adrenaline was affecting her thought process. He'd have to ease her into this.

"Hi Seras." Joshua smiled. "Listen, I don't actually know how well these portals work as a containment device, so let's just assume we're short on time and listen to me, 'kay?" The air behind them bubbled out with a furious sound. Joshua just continued smiling like it was all a part of his plan. It was not. "Have you ever read Dracula?"

Seras squinted at him like he was going looney. More than usual anyway. "What? Yeah, duh, there are probably a hundred copies in the manor. Integra gave me that before she gave me a gun."

"Perfect! Okay, you remember the part where Dracula sails into the harbor as a wolf and the ship is cloaked in mist? Kinda like what he did earlier tonight." 

Seras sobered slightly at the thought of her master. "Yeah... I remember."

The air bubbled again, this time much larger. Joshua could hear Annabelle cursing his name in some very colorful language through the dimensional barrier. "Great! So that was real, right? And you are a fully bloodied sire of Dracula himself. Ergo, you should have all of his powers to a certain extent, including the weather control. So, what I need from you is to bring down a fog that makes pea soup look like dirty glass."

_______________________________________________________________________

Annabelle finally burst through the lining of Joshua's pocket dimension and tumbled onto the ground. She planted herself squarely, prepared to lunge in any direction, and found herself in a plane of absolute grey. She stood up and examined her surroundings: the fog was all-encompassing, so thick she could not see farther than ten feet in front of her, and even that far was hazy. The sky was completely blotted out. Annabelle scoffed.

"Please." A Pin on her arm lit up and a shockwave burst out from Annabelle's body. The fog dispersed in a solid bubble, but almost immediately filled back in. "Hmm." She floated up and out of the fog, high enough to get a vantage. Off in the distance she saw Reece fighting that Living Player she had heard so much about. The boy was putting up a good fight, she gave him that. It was clear how he won whatever Game he participated in, even without the absurd amount of Pins. She also noted that Kiryu was not in the fight with them, which led her to the natural conclusion: he and Seras were in the fog, trying to ambush her.  _ Fine then,  _ she thought ruefully.  _ I'll kill you both without the other even realizing. _ And so she descended back into the fog and started walking.

Annabelle walked confidently, taking full strides with her head raised, scanning her path. She did a few circles, waiting for a slight noise or a flash of movement, but nothing. Annabelle seemed to be alone.

_ Alone. _ Annabelle stopped and clenched her one fist. Her eyes misted, briefly, but she stopped to wipe them.  _ Completely alone. _

"Annabelle." Annabelle turned and shot a lightning spear in the direction of the voice. It disappeared into the fog, hitting nothing. She narrowed her eyes and peered deeper into the fog. Nothing...

There! The vampire's glowing red eyes, piercing through the mist like headlights. Annabelle swung her chain out to snare Seras, but it struck only air. The eyes darted away as quick as they came.

"Annabelle, why do you hate me so much?" Annabelle spun around and saw Seras standing only a few feet away from her. She had gotten another shirt apparently, this one yellow instead of her blood red. And her arm had grown back entirely.  _ Damn it, she's toying with me so she can heal! _ Annabelle pounced at her, but connected with nothing but fog. She landed on all fours and looked back in confusion. Seras had vanished.

"Answer the question!" There she was again, back where Annabelle had jumped from! Except her arm was still that black energy. Had she been mistaken? Annabelle pounded the ground and the earth shot toward Seras. The view was obscured for a second, and then she was gone.

"Just shut up and fight me!" Annabelle yelled into the air.

"Anny, what's wrong?" Behind her again, but this was no vampire before Annabelle's eyes. It was a little girl, blonde haired and blue eyed. Annabelle recognized her instantly, her image couldn't be erased from her mind.

"You're what's wrong you fucking pest!" she shouted and struck out at the child Seras. Seras flinched, narrowly avoiding Annabelle's fist, and fled into the fog.

"What did I doooo?!" The question echoed over the courtyard and through Annabelle's head. Her frustration was growing more and more palpable every time the beast spoke. 

"Would you just shut up already?!"

"Why are you so angry Anny?"

"I'm angry because you're a spoiled fucking brat who won't shut up and DIE!" A shockwave burst out of Annabelle's body and revealed the child Seras standing alone a short distance away, looking at her with an intense fear.

"What did I do wrong Anny?" she asked with big blue doe eyes. Annabelle ran at her, but the fog swallowed her up and she disappeared.

"Everything!" Annabelle bent over and screamed. "Everything you did was wrong! You're the worst kind of human, and now you aren't even human! You're a filthy monster!"

"What did I do Anny?" Seras was crying now, scared out of her wits. Annabelle spun around, looking for the child so she could rip out her heart. "I only tried my best!"

"You're best isn't good enough! You didn't deserve to be Composer, you earned nothing! The most powerful position in all of London, more powerful than the Queen herself, handed to a child who hadn't even died yet! You're a disgrace!"

"It wasn't my choice! I didn't want to hurt anybody, I just wanted to be good!"

"SHUT UP!" Then Annabelle saw her, fallen on her knees crying just a short distance away. Little Seras Victoria, never a Player, never a Reaper, but handed the keys to the UG and told to drive. Annabelle's rage flared, and she leapt up into the air to drive her fist into the girl's head. The sun flared behind her, Seras was just below her, it would be over in a second...

"WHAT DID I DO?!" And there it was. The giant, leering over them. Annabelle saw it standing over Seras, a small child, its arm raised to crush her like a bug. Annabelle saw it, and instantly she felt her own fear, that fear of the giant that plagued her since she had died and played the Game. The fear of the thing that consumed her, and Jacky, Megan, Bob, Rocky, Butch, everyone who ever came near it. Annabelle saw it, and she knew it.

She landed inches in front of the terrified Seras. She stared straight at the blasted earth, unable to look at the girl. Her mouth flapped, stammering for words that Annabelle herself did not quite understand.

"... Nothing." Annabelle answered the little girl. "You didn't do anything, Seras. You didn't deserve what I... what I did to you." The memory of that night flashed in Annabelle's mind. The taunting. The lies. The beating...  _ She was an innocent little girl. _ "I... You... you did nothing wrong. And I destroyed you because of that."

"Wow," Joshua's voice rang out like a dog whistle in an echo chamber. The child Seras faded away before Annabelle's eyes, showing Joshua a distance behind her holding his phone's camera up. "And you only had to kill her four times to realize how bad of a person you are!"

Annabelle's face contorted into an animalistic rage. There, right behind Joshua, was the giant. It was feeding him power, power to kill her. Joshua smiled, and the giant smiled with him. They waved at her, taunted her, and she charged to kill them both. Annabelle had lived in the giant's shadow for decades, since the day she was born. But no more. The giant would fall, and the Game would fall with it, and the Higher Ups, and whatever accursed god set all this into motion. She would kill each and every one of them!

*BANG*

Annabelle's momentum stopped. She took a single gasping breath, then looked down at the bloody hole where her belly had once been. Seras knelt behind Joshua's legs, holding Reece's rifle against her shoulder. Annabelle looked back up, tried to widen her legs to keep balance, and slipped into a crater.

The fog lifted over the grounds, and the sun shined down on Annabelle at the bottom of the hole. Seras and Joshua stood on the lip of it, gazing down at her.

"That's not going to kill her on its own," Joshua said. "You'll have to shoot her in the head to finish her off."

"I know." Seras grabbed the muzzle of the rifle and slammed the butt into Joshua's nose. He squealed through a broken nose and stumbled backward. "That's for being an asshole," Seras said, and she stepped down into the crater.

Annabelle struggled to crawl out of the crater on her back, trailing blood from her slowly healing stomach. Seras stepped on her arm and halted her, and she slid back down to the bottom. Annabelle panted, staring at the vampire. Seras' face was unreadable. Her Familiar arm stretched out several tendrils and unhooked the Pins from Annabelle's arm, rendering her nearly powerless.

Seras looked down at the broken, bleeding woman who had so cruelly taken away her life, and she could not bring herself to feel even a little happy. "Hey Anny."

Annabelle looked up at the girl who she had hated for so many years, completely at her mercy, and could not bring herself to feel even a little angry. "Hey Seras."

The two women stared at each other for a while, unsure what would come next but knowing what had to happen. Seras was visibly uncomfortable, shifting in her boots and constantly adjusting the strap of her tank top.

"Annabelle," she eventually said. "Why did you hate me?"

Annabelle almost laughed at the question. "Does it even matter at this point?"

"Yes," Seras said immediately, eyes locked on Annabelle's. "It does."

She looked at her for a while. "I hate you because you were handed everything I ever wanted on a silver platter after I worked so hard to get them." She looked her up and down with a slight scowl. "Even your vampirism. You didn't earn that. You were given it."

"But why does that matter?!" Seras threw up her arms. "I didn't ask to be made Composer, Reece just showed up in my bedroom one night and said 'Hey, you're a queen now.' I was maybe six, I didn't get a choice."

"It matters." Annabelle insisted. "You didn't deserve that power. Butch did, or Megan, or Richard, or me! But no, the Higher Ups picked a girl who hadn't even played the Game. Probably wouldn't have even won if you had."

"Man fuck off, I stabbed a guy in the eye with a fork." Annabelle surprisingly laughed at this, and the laugh turned into a bloody cough.

"Heh, alright maybe you would've put up a good fight. Still though... you have to earn it. You HAVE to."

"Mm." Seras sat back against the opposite slope of the crater, cradling the rifle on her knees. She watched Annabelle for a while, and Annabelle stared up into the sky. 

"So..." Seras said. "You always hated me? Just because of that?"

"From day one." Annabelle said simply. 

"Hmm." Seras furrowed her eyebrows and hugged her knees, thinking. "Hey, you remember that night my parents were going out and had to find a babysitter?"

Annabelle groaned. "Oh please don't do this..."

"And I came to HQ and got you to come be my babysitter. You showed up at my place dressed like a catholic school girl." Seras laughed, remembering the strange looks her parents had given her.

"It was the only formal wear I had at the time!" Annabelle defended herself.

"Babysitting isn't a formal job Anny." Seras chuckled, then returned to her reverie. "I remember you made mac and cheese that night, and you didn't understand how to turn the stove on so you just had your Noise boil the... water." She trailed off as she saw Annabelle's face darken. "You called it Jacky. I hadn't come up with Tamed Noise yet, you gave me the idea to pair Noise and Reapers. You just carried it around with you."

"Her," Annabelle snapped. "Not 'it.' Her."

"Right... You know, I was a cop before this."

"Like your dad, I know."

"How'd you know?"

"I kept tabs on you." Annabelle shrugged. "I was the only one who knew what orphanage you lived at, I kept an eye on you over the years. Wanted to make sure the memory wipe stuck. Then you died and I thought okay, that's done. Heh, I even almost felt bad that you were gone, if you believe that. I liked the you that became a cop. Then in comes Bob telling me you discovered the Reaper Game and here I am thinking you died an adult, that doesn't make sense. So I sent Bob to check it out, knowing you were probably an undead."

"You... KNEW?!"

"Why else would I send Reece as backup, I figured you could be a dangerous undead and might kill Bob. Honestly I'm glad you did kill him, that poor boy was breaking. He wasn't made for Reaper life, but Georgie... well. Not all Composers strictly follow the rules." She pushed herself up onto her elbows so she could better stare at Seras. "What are you trying to do?"

"What?"

"With this." Annabelle indicated the two of them. "Do you think we're going to have a friendly chat, share some old memories, and then we're going to be all buddy-buddy? All attempted murder put behind us or something?"

"Annabelle," Seras said sadly. "Do you know how many people died tonight? Do we really need to increase that body count by one more?"

"Thousands." Annabelle answered. "Thousands of people. But also thousands of people who DIDN'T die. You know why? Because I was there! I went into the city and I saved people. And Megan saved people, and now she's dead." Seras' mouth slacked. "Yeah, you didn't know that did you? Megan died tonight, but she died SAVING people. My Players died tonight, every last one, except for one. That girl is waiting in HQ right now waiting for the reward that she earned. They saved human lives tonight. And tell me Seras, where were you during all this? How many people did you save? Based on the man in your shoulder, I'd guess not a lot." Suddenly she pushed up with her shoulders, balanced on her feet for a moment, and tried to punch Seras. She dodged the slow strike easily, scooting to the side as Annabelle fell on her face.

"Bitch," Annabelle  mumbled into the dirt, and she began pushing herself up again.

"Annabelle stop this! It's over, you lost. There's no point in us fighting anymore."

"NO!" Annabelle turned and yelled. "That, that right there, is EXACTLY your problem. You don't understand what it means to be beaten down with no way to win, no blood to drink, no one else to support you, and to keep fighting! I will NEVER stop, Seras. Every breath I take, every moment of consciousness I hold onto, I will keep getting up and fighting!" She wavered back on her feet, blood still dripping out of the hole in her stomach, and stared down at Seras. "One of us is going to EARN that throne, Seras. Either you're going to lay down and die because you're not willing to sacrifice for it, or you're going to kill me and finally earn the power you have."

Annabelle lunged again, faster this time, and Seras stepped out of the way. She spun around with the rifle aimed for Annabelle's head.

"Last chance Anny," Seras said, almost choking on the ultimatum. Annabelle looked into her eyes. There was no hate there anymore, no anger, not even insanity. Annabelle's eyes showed only nothingness.

"I gave up my last chance the night I stole the throne Seras," she said. She pulled on a gold chain wrapped around her neck, and Seras gawked at her old pendant. "I believe with all my heart that this belongs to me. I'm all in, no regrets, no apologies. I'm not afraid to kill you to prove myself. What about you?" Annabelle procured a bayonet from behind her back and charged at Seras, the point aimed true for her heart.

*BANG*

Reece's brain cracked open, and that spot where he had been connected to Annabelle was abruptly severed. A paralysis of horrible realization gripped him as Neku continued to beat him down with stones and fire. Neku noticed after a moment that the man had stopped fighting back and lowered his Pins.

"Uhh," he said, looking confused at Reece's distant face. "Did I hit your off button or something?" Reece did not answer him. His body slowly turned in the direction he heard that shot come from, and his feet lurched forward. His lurch became a walk, and then a run, until Reece was sprinting toward the crater. 

Neku reached to stop him, but a hand fell on his shoulder. "It's fine," Joshua said nasally, adjusting his broken nose. "Our job here is done. Now the pieces all find their place themselves."

Reece's vision became blurry, tunnelling to that singular spot. It couldn't be, not again, he couldn't have failed twice...

The sight stopped him on a dime. At the bottom of the hole, laying in a pool of her own blood. Annabelle King, Composer of London, with dead eyes and a bullet hole the size of a football through the top of her head. She had already faded away to her upper torso, and the rest of her was disappearing before his eyes. And standing over her was Seras, holding a gun he had built with his two hands. The brown haired girl stood over the horseman's bleeding body, and the horseman stood over the girl. Visions blinded Reece, and he could do nothing but stand and watch. The horseman loomed over him like a metal titan, pointing a spear up into the sky decorated with two heads... no, it was three now.

"You can't escape me," the horseman said to Reece. "No matter how deeply you hide yourself, you will always feel love. And I will be there to rip it away from you. You cannot fight it, you cannot die. You can only watch..." The horseman rode past Reece, offered him a reassuring pat on the back as three pairs of dead eyes stared into his soul, and rode into the distance.

Seras wiped her face of what few tears she could bring herself to shed for Annabelle, and turned to leave when she saw Reece standing above her, face obscured by shadow. "Reece..."

The Producer stepped down into the hole with them. His eyes seemed a thousand miles away when he stared at Annabelle's vanishing corpse.

"I didn't want to," Seras said, feeling weak and wretched as the words came out of her mouth. "She wouldn't stop unless I..." 

Reece knelt down by Annabelle's body, ignoring Seras' words. The fire had gone out in Annabelle's eyes, leaving nothing but cold ashes. He closed them tenderly as she faded away completely. In the spot she laid was the golden pendant, soaked with blood but still glittering in the daylight. He had made that too, Reece remembered. Made it especially for Seras' birthday. He picked it up, and in the reflection he could see Seras. She was a little child, smiling and crying and still so full of life. She was a vampire, standing behind him with a look on her face like she might break down crying if he continued to say nothing. He thought he would if he did say anything.

He turned, bloody pendant in hand, and placed his hand on Seras' little head. "I know Seras. It's..." Tears ran down his face, and the words came out in a sob. "It's okay." Seras wrapped her arms around him and supported his weight as he stood limply, holding onto her like she was the last person left in the world and stifled his sobs.

"When did you get so damned big?" Reece asked, and Seras had no answer for him. It had simply happened. She didn't know if it was given to her or if she'd earned it, but she knew it was true. Seras Victoria had become larger than ever. 

Joshua and Neku sat in the dirt and watched from a distance, finally allowed to rest. Neku could feel his wire of energy wearing off and eventually he would collapse from exhaustion, but he wasn't ready to sleep just yet. Joshua held his head in his hand and watched expressionlessly as the Producer and the vampire walked back out of the crater.

"This has been a stupid week," Neku eventually said.

"Agreed," Joshua nodded tiredly.

"I think I fought an old Conductor that ate people and used their bodies to create a flesh monster?"

"Yeah," Joshua sighed. "That sounds about right. London is a messed up place."

"Why did we do this again?" Neku asked.

Joshua played with a strand of his hair. "Because when you keep several Players in a Game for almost a month and threaten to blow up your city for a social experiment, the Higher Ups get upset. If we didn't do this I would've been erased, at best. And if we failed, well, same story."

Neku grunted. "No more social experiments."

Joshua shrugged and grinned to himself. "I can only promise to try." A tone sounded from his phone. Joshua pressed a couple buttons and looked intently at his screen. "Looks like we're clear. I can call up our ride home whenever we're ready." 

"Okay," Neku said, standing to meet Seras. Joshua floated up in his seat, but stood regularly when Neku elbowed him.

Neku and Seras looked at each other, not wholly sure what to say. 

"So, umm..." Neku said, rubbing his head. "Are you okay?"

Seras visibly deflated. "Not at all, no."

"Yeah, me neither." The four stood there in silence, and then out of nowhere Neku chuckled. "I swear, every time I make friends some dumb tragic anime bullshit happens. I must be cursed." Seras laughed with him.

"Neku, I am in the same boat." Bernadotte suddenly rose out of Seras' Familiar arm and gave Neku a friendly slap on the back.

"Hey, at least you'll have some insane stories to tell the girls back home, eh! Make sure you keep the gun as proof, women love a man with a gun!"

Neku, so taken aback by Bernadotte's appearance, decided to just roll with it and not ask. "Uh, you don't know Japan very well do you?" Bernadotte grinned mischievously at him, and Neku thought he might have winked. It was hard to tell with the eye patch.

Meanwhile Reece was staring hard at the half-visible man coming out of Seras' body. "Who is this?" Bernadotte and Seras looked at him, Seras with a heavy blush. She pulled Pip back into her body and rubbed her shoulder.

"Uhh, long story. Tell you later?" 

Joshua tapped Neku. "We should get going dear, no guarantee this portal will stay on my phone."

"Right, right." Seras extended her hand to Neku, and he took it. Her grip was tight and hot, and she smiled a genuine smile at him. He returned it.

"Don't fuck up," Neku said.

"Ha, right. And you stay out of the Game."

"Trust me, I intend to grow into an old man before I die again."

"Good plan. Life is much easier when you're alive."

A large portal opened up behind Neku and Joshua. Joshua nudged him and the two turned to leave. Back to Shibuya, in their own time.

"The world would be so much simpler if people just died when they were killed," Neku commented.

"Yeah, but where's the fun in that?" Joshua said, grinning back at Seras. "I'll give you a call when he get home. You and I have more to discuss."

"I look forward to it." Seras did not look forward to it.

And so the two boys who fell out of the sky stepped through the portal and vanished. The hole closed, and Seras and Reece were left alone.

"So," Reece said. "What now?"

Seras looked back at the manor, blown to shambles. Rebuilding would take a great deal of time, but for now everything was peaceful. Finally, after so long, peaceful. Integra would likely sleep for the rest of the day at least. She had time.

The pendant glinted up at her, black and white and gold and red. She toyed with it for a moment, wondering if she even really wanted the throne. No one had ever given her a choice until now. She could easily say no, give the Game to someone else. But...

"Now," Seras said, tying the golden chain around her neck. "I earn my place as the Composer of London. I believe I have a winning Player to reward, and a whole lot of souls to judge."


End file.
